by Thom JurekRichard Hawley's last album, Cole's Corner, was nominated and shortlisted for the Mercury Prize (the British equivalent of the Pulitzer). He may not have won it (the Arctic Monkeys did), but it did bring his name and ultimately his music to a far greater group of people than had ever been exposed to them before. This is a grand thing, simply because Hawley's articulate, timeless brand of rock-based pop is sophisticated, focused, and ultimately quite beautiful. In this day and age, a man who can deliver three solid albums and an EP without a crap tune has got something. Cole's Corner, named for a geographical location in Sheffield where Hawley lives, was an elaborate meditation on friendship, memory, and love, inhabited by the ghosts for whom that little piece of real estate -- the concrete corner outside a now bulldozed department store -- was idealized as a piece of hidden history in the human heart. Being an album celebrated by nearly everyone but those critics who have sawdust instead of blood in their veins, it might have been a difficult act to follow and a singular event in the career of a less talented songwriter.... Read More...