Product Description

Richard Hawley may have been best known as a guitarist for the likes of Beth Orton, Pulp, and others, but his first solo album LATE NIGHT FINAL firmly establishes his identity as a compelling singer/songwriter. Much of the album is occupied by dark, moody, late-night tracks where Hawley's Scott Walker-meets-Tindersticks voice hangs languorously over spare but elegant arrangements. Despite his downcast cabaret tendencies, though, Hawley is a popster at heart, and a number of songs here could very conceivably have been recorded 30 years ago by the likes of Harry Nilsson or Glen Campbell in thatgolden age of US pop radio. Hawley's songs are unburdened by overworked metaphor, instead relying on simple, evocative images to paint pictures of loss, despondency, and the occasional romantic ray of hope shining through the dimness.

Track Listing

1. Something Is
2. Baby You're My Light
3. Love Of My Life
4. The Nights Are Cold
5. Can You Hear The Rain, Love?
6. Lonely Night
7. Precious Sight
8. No Way Home
9. Cry A Tear For The Man In The Moo
10. Long Black Train
11. The Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3071 in Music
• Released on: 2001-10-15
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

Rat Pack For The Troubled
I like this record, it took a few go's but the mans deep voice with lyrics that plod by like a funeral car are real and compelling..With songs about healing his heart and soul, that are delivered with enough passion and pinash to fill up your eyes, as far as i'm concerned you can't go wrong..Slowly Simmering Record
Style : Think Old Blue Eyes paricly eclipsed in the mist of a restless ghost

Sombre and lightly sardonic torch songs for lost souls
Late Night Final, which came out in 2001, was the first long player from Sheffield singer-songwriter Richard Hawley (discounting his mini-album released in the same year). Before taking to the stage on his own, he played guitar in various Brit-bands such as Longpigs, Pulp, and featured on tracks for All Saints and Finley Quaye, all the while keeping his baritone crooner voice and music-hall songs in the wings. Here they unfurl to great effect: nostalgic balladry, a slow dirge-like tempo and heartfelt emotion expressed in hushed tones. The Guardian described him as 'as lachrymose as Roy Orbison, as romantic as Frank Sinatra, but as unsentimental as Jarvis Cocker'.

Lyrically, he likes to sneak a bit of sardonic wit into the melancholy mixing bowl: 'You want to know how we got to where we are now?', he asks on one track, 'The nights are cold' he sings nonchalantly in refrain. Hawley is not as spiky as Morrissey, however; this is melancholy with a little bite. He's also proves adept at writing starkly poetic one-liners: 'Your road is bitter like the whip of the wind', 'Beauty nails me to her cross' (The Nights are Cold), 'Your sin in your eyes' (Love Of My Life); 'As life goes on, you know you have to face / All you find' (Baby, You're My Light). Hawley also demonstrates a talent for inspired song titles: the last track (an instrumental) is called, for example, 'The light at the end of the tunnel (was a train coming the other way)'.

On stage (he is touring the UK in September 2007) he's the epitomie of the old-fashioned caberet singers with his gag-song-gag routine. At the Scala club in London a few years ago, one gag in particular seemed to sum him up in a nutshell: 'Some people have described this kind of music - gentle music - as bedwetter music,' he observed. 'Well, I'll come and piss on your mattress any fookin' time.'

Highly recommended!

It's all too beautiful....
There is nothing bad to be said about this album.
It contains beautiful songs, beautifully played and sung, that happen to be beautifully written.
It's as if Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash and Paul Heaton met over a beer and made a beautiful album.
As near a perfect album as we can get in this day and age.