Pitchfork

Richard Hawley's 2005 album Coles Corner was refreshingly and, in many ways, reassuringly retro. The album exuded romance in every sense, set to a gorgeous backdrop redolent of the classic Sun Records rockabilly sound and classy post WWII pop. The record was one big beautiful swoon from start to finish. It was also of such a piece-- and so relatively successful-- that it's not the sort of disc that's easy to follow up. By default, Hawley was forced to take one of two routes: Either stray from his stylistic path or stick with the tried and true. With Lady's Bridge he chose the latter.

Like the title of its predecessor, Lady's Bridge is a reference to Hawley's hometown, Sheffield-- specifically, the town's oldest bridge, located in the center of the city. It's also the perfect metaphor for how Hawley's playing things: The album, too, is right in the middle, an echo of Coles Corner without quite as much of that disc's lonely late-night impact. It's also virtually identical to the path Nick Lowe's recently been following, which does Hawley no favors, since Hawley lacks both Lowe's lyrical wit and sense of history. Hawley does, however, have just as astute a sense of craft, and when the acoustic strum of opener "Valentine" gives way to a lush, fully orchestrated swell, it's hard not to be taken aback by his earnest appropriation of a bygone sound.

Yet following Coles Corner, it's nevertheless a little harder to be totally taken in by it. Even when Hawley peps things up with "Serious" or opening single "Tonight the Streets Are Ours", there's something removed and distant about his hyper-romanticism. It begins to feel less like appropriation than note-perfect recreation, like a filmmaker using state of the art digital effects to give his work the look of a weathered old print.

What the evocative but curiously ephemeral Lady's Bridge could really have used is an acknowledgement of the present, some application of Hawley's inspiring songcraft that resonates in harmony with today rather than simply as an escape from the past. There's plenty of room to do that, too, as witnessed in the way Hawley's friend and cohort Jarvis Cocker applies his own croon or erstwhile peer Morrissey shapes something modern out of his mostly backwards looking musical preferences. Lady's Bridge instead hones so rigidly to Hawley's established template that even such pretty tracks as "The Sea Calls" come across anti-climactic. We've heard it all before, not just from Hawley but also from all the sources Hawley mines.

Even as the disc winds down with the setting-sunisms of "Our Darkness" and "The Sun Refused to Shine", Lady's Bridge's mellow conclusion doesn't sound terribly unlike its mellow start or mellow middle. There's been no journey, no emotional progress, and little emotional payoff. For an album and artist so otherwise focused, the effect winds up more soporific than satisfying, however stylish and serene. It's like listening to a faded photo album.