Lowedges
Lowedgesis Richard Hawley's third album. Neither of its predecessors caused riots in record stores, but pretty much everyone who has paid attention to British pop music in the last decade has heard Richard Hawley. As a session guitarist forPulp,Robbie Williams,Beth Orton, and others, Hawley commands the airwaves to a degree that any similar singer-songwriter would kill for. It can't be easy though to live with the irony that the work that appears under his own name is his least known and by some distance his best.Lowedgessees Hawley sticking to the template he established on his two previous solo albums: knelling, tuneful ballads are built around an acoustic guitar and sung with a guttural croon that pitches somewhere betweenEdwyn Collinsand theDivine Comedy's Neil Hannon. LikeLeonard CohenandLee Hazlewood, Hawley revels in melancholy. Tracks such as "On the Ledge" and "You Don't Miss Your Water (Till Your River Runs Dry)" are confections of the most sumptuous misery. --Andrew Mueller