Song Of The Day 10/14/2014: Richard Hawley - "Just Like the Rain"

You Pick The Artist II: Andy Lewis gave me Richard Hawley. Perfect. As I've pedaled slowly, ever slowly towards the dog-eared autumn of my crumbling existence, Richard Hawley is exactly the type of artist I tend to steer myself towards these days. You already know about my Divine Comedy and Scott Walker obsessions; in my distant past there were Mark Eitzel/AMC, dark Lloyd Cole and pre-jerkwad Mark Kozelek obsessions as well. Sometimes I call them in for tabletop shuffleboard and smoking jackets. We all have a great time and the ladies avoid us like rickets.

Hawley is an associate of Jarvis Cocker (who kind of fits into that group up there) and was actually in Pulp's touring outfit for a little while. I can't quite determine the details. He was in a Brit band called Treebound Story; what little I've heard of them is nice. Hawley's solo albums are great works of sustained mood and judgment-averse romanticism. They're extremely well-arranged and grounded, even if they take '60s Pan Am flights to sweetly isolated locations and just stare at natives for awhile. He's like a less giddy Nick Lowe. If you saw the great Bansky documentary Exit Through The Gift Shop then you heard Hawley's spiraling track "Tonight the Streets Are Ours" over the opening credits.

I picked "Just Like The Rain" from Hawley's 2005 album Coles Corner. It has that halting Fred Neil countrypolitan wonder about it. I've also completed my task to use "countrypolitan" in a sentence, so I'll let you get back to listening to Richard Hawley. Here's a little more: