:: Track Listing

1. Valentine
2. Roll River Roll
3. Serious
4. Tonight the Streets Are Ours
5. Lady Solitude
6. Dark Road
7. The Sea Calls
8. Lady's Bridge
9. I'm Looking for Someone to Find Me
10. Our Darkness
11. The Sun Refused to Shine

:: Record Review

Richard Hawley

Lady's Bridge
(Mute; 2007)

Rating: 65%
Combined Rating: 66%


On his fourth album, Lady's Bridge, it might seem like British crooner Richard Hawley is picking up pretty much where he left off on his last disc, Cole's Corner (2005). He's still making the most of that gorgeous baritone, and the arrangements are still baroque pop -- they seem more in line with the music of the '60s than the '00s. Listening to the album, however, it's clear he's taking his music in new, if sometimes contradictory, directions: he's simultaneously upping the orchestral ante and paring down his lyrics to their bare bones.

The orchestral part of that equation shouldn't be much of a surprise. Hawley clearly loves the golden-era pop that he's mined over his last few albums, and since part of the game with orchestral pop is bombast his retro-arrangements pretty much necessitate constant one-upmanship. To create that ambience Hawley crams an enormous amount of instrumentation into each song. Beyond his basic rock elements, big string builds seem to be a requirement; he also incorporates harpsichord, slide guitar, and plenty of bells and whistles (literally). When he gets the formula right, as on the jaunty, bass-driven "Serious" and the title track, the results can be great. A prime example is the show-stopping "Our Darkness," which starts pretty and unassuming before he hits a stunning horn crescendo.

As for the lyrics, well, Hawley's never been exactly verbose. Judging by his evolution from Lowedges (2003), he's increasingly eschewed ranging lyrics in favor of repetition. In the right context, Hawley can make it work ("Serious," for example), but even with that silky-smooth voice he can't really obscure how weak a lot of his lyrics are. "Roll River Roll" and "Dark Road" suffer the most egregiously; the latter, especially, since a cowboy song that comes from a British man who once served as touring guitarist for Pulp doesn't seem all that convincing.

The album has too many moments like that, where instrumental overload backs up against lyrical whateverness and disengages the listener. If the listener ever gets there, since compounding the problem is one of the most misguided ways to open an album in recent memory, pairing the sleeperiffic "Valentine" with the even sleepier "Roll River Roll." The songs where everything clicks -- "Serious," the lovely "Tonight the Streets Are Ours," and "Lady Solitude" -- are exceptions, proving that Hawley's got the song-writing and orchestral chops to manage better than this, and it's kind of a shame to see him floundering. Peter Hepburn :: 22 October 2007 |