I dig this... 5 - Richard Hawley

The tales of love and loss by Sheffield’s tormented troubadour, Richard Hawley, will always find a way into Rob Peacock’s play list…

Humdrum urban life has always made good song writing fodder. You use it one of two ways; detail the squalor and seediness of backwater Britain to paint a gritty portrait of life on the edge (see Arctic Monkeys, Jarvis Cocker), or ludicrously romanticise it, turning every cracked paving stone or box bedroom assignation into a drama of cinematic proportions, erm, Jarvis Cocker again, and Sheffield’s premier balladeer, Richard Hawley.

Formerly a journeyman guitarist (he supplied the guitars on All Saints’ Under The Bridge), he’s now stepped out on three solo albums, slowly gathering plaudits on the way. Now, with the right rain-soaked epic, he could crack the James Blunt blub-into-your-beer market, but put this commercial proposition to Hawley and you’d probably get a barrage of choice Sheffield language.

Despite the lilting country and syrupy strings, he’s a chiselled rock ‘n’ roller at heart. Call him a romantic and you’ll be told, as DJ Steve Lamacq was, to ‘fook off’. Ask him about Sheffield and he’ll admit, ‘it’s a post-industrial shithole, but it’s my favourite post-industrial shithole’. Ask him about the title of his album, Coles Corner, and he’ll tell you it’s the place in Sheffield where his parents met, before adding ‘and then they had a shag and here I am’.

But for all the prosaic put-downs, Hawley does for Sheffield what Springsteen does for rustbelt America – chronicles its lost hopes and faded dreams and mythologises them. And with a voice in the old school tradition of Scott Walker or Roy Orbison or - if you’re Radio 2’s Jimmy Young, ‘a cross between Andy Williams and Percy Sledge’ (is that a good thing?) - he’s got the perfect tool to deliver his message.

This is music for the misty-eyed, the heartbroken and the terminally romantic. When he sings ‘I’m going downtown where there’s music…’ on the aforementioned title track, Coles Corner, you’re wanting the girl of his dreams to be waiting for him, but you know she’ll never turn up. So for goodness sake, if you’re of a sensitive bent, bring a hanky or at least a stiff upper lip; you’ve got Sheffield’s most tortured romantic on your hands. Just don’t say that to his face.

Rob Peacock