Richard Hawley - Tonight The Streets Are Ours (Mute)
UK release date: 6 August 2007
How does he do it? Every so often, Richard Hawley will just turn up, fag in hand and quiff intact, and proceed to make the most lovely, swoonsome pop you've heard this year. He did it a couple of years ago with the gorgeous Coles Corner, and you'd be willing to bet he couldn't do it again.
Well, you'd be wrong, for Tonight The Streets Are Ours is possibly Sheffield's most romantic man's finest moment to date. It boasts swooping strings, that golden voice, and a melody that makes you want to rush out and grab the nearest person to grab cheek-to-cheek with. He even seems to be becoming a bit political, with attacks on "these people, they have nothing in their soul, they make our TVs blind us from our visions and goals". It's an attack on both the ASBO generation and the Government that made them.
Yet, as ever with Hawley, love finds a way to redeem everything. When he sings "No one else can haunt me, the way that you haunt me", you'll have goosebumps up your spine and a lump in your throat. Wonderful stuff from a man who gets better and better.
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