Richard Hawley is one if those songwriters who just instantly convinces.

Maybe it's because he and his four-man band arrived in a tiny van marked Sheffield Transport. Maybe it's something to do with being 39 rather than 22. Maybe it's just the way his throat trembled when he sang of taking his lover in his arms on the gently waltzing Hotel Room.

Whatever, you find yourself trusting in the relatively unknown Hawley like you trust in Scott Walker or Johnny Cash.

Prior to the critical adoration of 2005's Coles Corner, Hawley worked as a session musician and toured as a guitarist with Pulp. As a frontman he's calm, quiet and effortlessly engaging.

With a languid baritone that sounded as though he had, as he put it on Born Under A Bad Sign, been sleeping late in the afternoon, staying out 'til dawn, Hawley crooned elegantly candid, country-tinged ballads hinged on domestic regret and majestic wistfulness.

A hopeless romantic in reality as in song, Hawley once cried at the sight of a bottle of Sheffield's Henderson's Relish. He sings like a man who's figured out what's important in life.