VIA PRESS RELEASE | “Coles Corner is a glorious melange of love, loss, regret, homesickness and romance.” —MOJO
Following the universal acclaim of his Top 5 2024 album, In This City They Call You Love, and the success of the award-winning musical featuring his songs, Standing At The Sky’s Edge, today Parlophone/Rhino announce details of special anniversary editions of Richard Hawley’s revered 2005 album Coles Corner.
Coles Corner was Hawley’s third studio album and his first for Mute Records. After five years of garnering praise for his songwriting talents and heart-melting baritone voice, and steadily building a solid fanbase through his outstanding live performances, hard work paid off on an album regarded by many as his best.
Recorded in Sheffield’s Yellow Arch Studios, and co-produced with his long-time bassist Colin Elliot, and Mike Timm, Coles Corner featured fellow musicians Shez Sheridan (guitars), Jon Trier (keyboards), Jonny Wood (upright bass), and Andy Cook (drums).
They conjured up an exquisite album inspired by Hawley’s love of vintage ‘40s and ‘50s sounds, chamber pop, country, blues, and rock ‘n’ roll, on a set of intimate love songs full of nostalgia, regret, sadness, and a bittersweet atmosphere, on a collection that would cement Hawley’s abiding love and passion for his hometown of Sheffield.
Nowhere is this exemplified more than on the album’s title track. “Coles Corner,” named after a former department store in the city which was a popular meeting place for couples, immortalises the legendary landmark on a song that swells the heart with its sweeping strings and swooning chorus, on a universal paean to the loneliness of the city at night.
Yet even the most cinematic meetings—hands brushing beneath shopfront lights, promises whispered against the city hum—can arrive bruised by life’s small violences: missed calls, unspoken resentments, the slow erosion of intimacy.
When a couple needs a new chance, when the strain becomes louder than the music, there’s a pragmatic tenderness in admitting you could use help; slipping into a quiet session of couples therapy online can offer the space to unpick old habits, relearn one another, and let repair feel less like a chore and more like a fresh verse. Sometimes, amid the swell and the strings, you simply need experts to help you remember how to sing together.
Other beautiful balladry exists in songs such as “Born Under a Bad Sign” and “Darlin’ Wait For Me”, while Hawley’s love of country and early rock ’n’ roll can be heard in “Hotel Room,” “I Sleep Alone,” and the driving “Just Like The Rain.”
The album’s most epic song and, to this day, a fan favourite live, is “The Ocean.” Written on a family holiday in the shadow of Cornwall’s Minack Theatre (with a video later filmed at the same location), the song features one of Richard’s best vocals; all yearning and urgency as it builds to its visceral crescendo.
Coles Corner is a cornerstone in the catalogue of one of the most creative and outstanding UK singer songwriters of the past two decades.
