Are two doctors better than one?

Along with better sanitation, medicine, education, irrigation, public health, roads, fresh water, baths and public order, another thing the Romans did for us was invent the doctor joke. I kid you not.

For the last couple of years experts on such things have been studying 256 side-splitters, written in Greek on a 3rd Century Roman manuscript, which includes this belter: "A doctor was talking to a patient. 'Doctor,' the patient says, 'Whenever I get up after a sleep, I feel dizzy. For half an hour, then I'm all right.' To which the doctor replies, 'Then wait for half an hour before getting up'. Ha, and, if I may, ha.

What history doesn't show is that it took another 700 years before the great Tommy Cooper improved upon this mirth with this gem: "Woman tells her doctor, 'I've got a bad back.' Doctor says, 'It's old age.' The woman says, 'I want a second opinion.' The doctor says: 'Okay - you're ugly as well.'" Fankuverymuch.

Unlike medical-themed comedy, music has found itself in the rudest of health in recent months. We've had - in no particular order of excellence - The Alabama Shakes' Boys And Girls, The Black Keys' storming El Camino, the return of Dodgy with Stand Upright In A Cool Place, Jack White's Blunderbuss, Bruce Springsteen's Wrecking Ball, Paul Weller's Sonik Kicks, Lana Del Rey's Born To Die and the truly stunning Standing At The Sky's Edge from Richard Hawley.

Such has been the volume of great albums coming out in recent weeks that it's taken a month to commit thoughts to blog on a brace of stunners from a pair of musical sawbones, Dr Robert and Dr John, but if you find yourself perusing your preferred music emporium this weekend - virtual or bricks and mortar - give one or all of these a try.

A year and a recent visit to a Spanish cardiovascular unit on from the release of The Blow Monkeys' exceptional Staring At The Sea, Bruce Robert Howard - the good Dr Robert to you and me - is back with an welcome blast of Mediterranean sunshine, Flutes And Bones (actually, and at risk of making awful political commentary about overworked doctors, Robert has actually brought out two solo albums - more of which in a moment).

Howard is one of Britain's most under-rated songwriters. It has baffled me for a long time why his profile isn't higher, or has been maintained to the heights he enjoyed in the 80s hey-days of The Blow Monkeys, the pop-soul-funk outfit who were a core of the white soul movement led by The Style Council and Animal Nightlife, as well as other popstrels like Curiosity Killed The Cat and Johnny Hates Jazz.

Hits like Digging Your Scene and It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way wrapped atypically mid-80s social and political commentary into beguiling pop, exemplified by their third album, She Was Only A Grocer’s Daughter - a delightful titular dig at Margaret Thatcher which even featured a collaboration with the legendary Curtis Mayfield.

With the deade's revival of agit-prop and CND, not to mention the establishment of protest camps at  the Greenham Common airbase by hardy-looking women, The Blow Monkeys joined in the soulful protest movement of the time. Alongside Paul Weller, Billy Bragg and Ken Livinstone at Red Wedge concerts, they endeavoured to ensure their music said something. Whoops! There Goes The Neighbourhood in 1989 took a hefty stance on many issues, including apartheid, while still staying on the funky side of soulful with songs like Wait featuring Kym Mazelle.

A split in the 90s saw Howard write and record with Weller, contributing to his self-titled solo debut as well as the Wild Wood and Stanley Road albums. In 2002, Robert moved his life to a village near Granada in Spain for a change of pace. For someone whose pop star image had been achingly cool, this was a befitting destination.

Put the pop star away, however, and you get Dr Robert, the gifted songwriter, velvet-smooth singer and a none-too-shabby guitarist, either. In between Blow Monkeys projects he has produced a steady stream of well received solo albums, including Five In The Afternoon, his 2007 project with soul singer P.P. Arnold which deserves to be played at least once a day, every day during the summer months.

To that summer playlist, add Flutes And Bones. Normally "more of the same" would suggest a lack of creative adventure, but in this case, it is just what the doctor ordered - a life-enhancing dose of exquisitely produced white soul with heavy traces of funk, blues and relaxing, siesta-sleepiness of Andalucian village life.

It's a top-down, cabriolet car car ride through bucolic hillside communities, inspired almost exclusively by the remote mountain village near where Robert now lives. Its title comes from a poem by Spanish laureate Federico Garcia Lorca about the death of a bullfighter, but the album itself is a far more genteel affair, capturing dozing whitewashed streets on track after track, from the looping acoustic guitar of Steal The Silver, to the lyrically more obvious Place In The Sun, the easy-going Face In The Rock and the album's closing title track, a pretty three-minute instrumental that will no doubt turn up on Spanish travel documentaries at some point. And if it doesn't, it should.

Flutes And Bones frequently offers Robert a platform to show off his impressive acoustic and electric guitar chops - particularly the single release, Coldheart, with its haunting and docile rhythm, Fools Gold-style double-tracked, echo-heavy vocal and woozy-bluesy soloing. But to appreciate his guitar playing further, Robert has simultaneously released Acoustic Blow Monkeys, a collection of ten tracks from his band's 31-year catalogue, 're-imagined' for a stripped down, man-and-guitar approach.

It is an album for fans, but if you were to come across The Blow Monkeys for the first time via this record, you wouldn't feel disappointed.

Some songs take on a new note: Digging Your Scene, for example, a once-sprightly 80s pop song takes on jazzier feel, with just a wah-wah pedal to funk it up a step, although the addition of electic guitar to the acoustic fills out the track further.

It Doesn't Have To Be This Way, on the other hand is the least different from the original. The Monkey's biggest hit, it makes an effortless transition here from the light pop of the original to the sparse, acoustic jazz without losing any familiarity.

Some - like Wait and Slaves No More sound, unsurprisingly, like different songs when removed from their 80s dance setting, but then that should be the expectation of an album which, on paper sounds like a solo singer-songwriter strumming away on his own in a Spanish hotel bar, but in reality feels well filled out by Howard's acoustic and electric guitars, and a 52-year-old voice that sounds deeper than it did almost three decades ago.

Fans of The Muppet Show will be familiar with Animal, the Venus Flytrap-eyebrowed drummer of indeterminate species, who flailed away at the back of the Electric Mayhem Band in a felt hybrid of Keith Moon, Cozy Powell, Carl Palmer and just about every showboating rock drummer to ever sit at a drum stool.

Often forgotten, sadly, is the band's spindly leader and ivory-tinkler, Dr Teeth - he of the crooked stovepipe hat and brick wall of teeth interrupted by a solitary gold one, long before Madonna made such accoutrements fashionable.

Teeth's characterisation as a slightly wonky keyboard player was no accident: Jim Henson himself based the character on legendary New Orleans voodoo-blues, funk and jazz pianist Dr John.

Born Mac Rebbennack - a name better suited to an Elmore Leonard novel, perhaps - Dr John has been one of the most acclaimed and enigmatic exponents of both boogie and woogie since emerging in the late 60s as a distinctive flavour of those creatively expressive times. His entry to piano playing might well have come out of one of Leonard's stories too: originally a guitar player, Rebbenack was playing guitar at 21 until losing part of a finger through gunfire while trying to protect a friend from getting pistol-whipped.

After several years of authentic New Orleans jazz albums - many, since Hurricane Katrina did her worst in 2005, in support of efforts to restore The Big Easy (and a fine job, too, as WWDBD? discovered last September), the 'Night Tripper' himself has returned to his early sound with what is, for me, one of the albums of 2012 - Locked Down.

Produced by The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach - doing the sort of career reboot that T-Bone Burnett and Rick Rubin have done for others, and a deliberate measure by Auerbach to get John's profile up - Locked Down is a delicious, Louisiana stew of vintage R'n'B and the jazz-tinged groove.

From the off, the title track's Lalo Schifrin-meets-Sergio Leone off-kilter groove sets the expectation level high for something special.


Locked Down is not just an opportunity for the 71-year-old Rebbennack to dust off his old electric piano chops, but dig into contemporary themes that have been burning him up.


Revolution takes a swipe at the political climate at a toe-tapping Stax pace, while Big Shot takes on pomposity with the sort of urban urgency that have made The Roots such a compelling band to listen to and watch (and what they're doing as the house band on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon baffles still).

Of all the deliberately retro twists, Ice Age takes the biscuit for its rigid African funk groove - one you suspect could easily be jammed out all night long - and laded with John's gumbo-grizzled growl gurgling over the top in an attack on societal ills like Crack and supposed conspiracy theories involving the "CIA, KKK - all playing in the same game".

Auerbach's influence on this album is more than just cheerleading a legend back to prominence (although his apparent offer to "produce the best record you've made in a long time" was a pretty compelling proposition). Hand-picking the musicians, Auerbach has enabled John to delve deeply into funk's past, with tracks like Kingdom Of Izzness and Eleggua applying the sort of liveliness that Curtis Mayfield and Issaac Hayes made classic blaxploitation movies like Foxy Brown and Shaft ease on down the road so entertainingly.

To close Locked Down, John walks down the aisle of swinging gospel funk with God Sure Good, a redemptive, spiritual acknowledgement of, perhaps, some higher purpose. John has enjoyed a colourful existence, and the impact of Katrina on New Orleans has clearly had its impact on him: "God been good to me/Better than me to myself/Pick me up, open the gates of hell/Made me well, told me a lesson/Brought me blessing/God don't be resting".

One of the most refreshing aspects of Locked Down is that it allows Dr John to stray from his 'Professional' Louisianan persona, his Crescent City version of the Pearly King, all swamp blues, zydeco and creole. It's delicious brew of old and new - an allegory itself for the New Orleans emerging from its recent travails -  disassociates John from the Lousiana voodoo his career has largely been associated with (an affectation of the Dr John character, as opposed to Jimmy Page's alleged private dabbling in the black arts of Aleister Crowley).

It wouldn't be right to see this as another reboot, good as some of the work that Rubin and Burnett have done elsewhere. Auberach has reached into Dr John's beating heart and found a musical essence to add into a swirling cauldron of the finest funk, rhythm and blues and soul that you'll hear this year, and maybe next too.

Princess of Darkness

Her father went from rural Tupelo, Mississippi to Memphis, Tennessee, to find his fortune, and then, with the exception of a brief stint soldiering for Uncle Sam in Germany, appeared to spend the rest of his career shuttling between Graceland and Las Vegas.

Lisa Marie Presley has taken a more leisurely route, helped not inconsiderably by inheriting papa's estate at the age of 25. But blessed - or cursed - with being the King of Rock and Roll's only offspring and sole heir, La Presley has, like most offspring of the incalculably famous, endured the spotlight all of her life - and long before she sought fame herself with her debut album.

That record, To Whom It May Concern, released in 2003, earned surprising plaudits - surprising in that being Elvis Presley's daughter was too much of an unfairly loaded dice for Presley herself, given that she will always be compared with the incomparable.

Its follow-up, Now What, faired less favourably, largely due to its choice of AOR durge, such as a dreadful cover of Don Henley's Dirty Laundry. Mind you, coming on the back of her failed third marriage (to Nicolas Cage), Presley was probably looking to blow off some steam.

Seven years later, the 44-year-old has returned with Storm & Grace, an album that draws strength from a combination of the go-to American roots producer du jour, T-Bone Burnett, and - incongruously - the unlikely influence of the cities of Sheffield, Glasgow and the London suburb of Wimbledon. Yes, let me read that back to you again - producer T-Bone Burnett, Sheffield, Glasgow and Wimbledon.

Burnett's knack of bringing new life to venerable artists like Tony Bennett and the late Roy Orbison, and raising the profile of bluegrass with his soundtrack work on O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss blockbuster Raising Sand, is clearly a perfect fit for Lisa Marie Presley, drawing together different strands of modern music's DNA, one way or another.

What is less obvious, but a masterstroke in my opinion, is Presley's choice of working with Britain's Richard Hawley (whose incredible new album Standing At The Sky's Edge came out last week - and reviewed here), along with south London's very own Ed Harcourt and Fran Healy from Travis. Like her father, Presley has canny management (Simon Fuller - svengali to the Beckhams, all the Spices and pop star-turned-pop stars' writer, Cathy Dennis), which enables you to stand back and admire Storm & Grace as a brilliantly crafted package - star, star producer, star writers.

Thankfully, the star ingredients have been turned into something edible (a relief as too often dream team combinations are considerably less the sum of their parts). Over Me - one of the tracks co-written by Presley and Harcourt - sets a tone of grown-up 'non-country' country-folk, lots of tremolo-shimmering guitar, a sound that continues onto You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet, which finds Presley drawling, confrontationally, lines like "You can think that I'm evil and I'm off the rails - you ain't seen nothing yet, thatI'm a bit transgressive and suppressive as well." Alrighty then.

Without even needing to look up the sleeve notes, Weary is quintessential Richard Hawley. With Presley crooning, kd lang-style, a torch song of failed love ("I would have been your Priestess but I tripped on my robe"), echoey guitars shimmer in the background. Likewise on How Do I Fly This Plane?, the title track itself and the penultimate number, I Was Wrong. Achingly beautiful songs which, simply, underline why Hawley is one of the best British songwriters to emerge in the last couple of decades. The partnership between Presley and Hawley dates back to 2009, when they first performed Weary on stage together. Hawley then set out to help relaunch her career, and of the tracks on Storm & Grace, his are probably the best. Perhaps a dedicated album from the pair wouldn't be out of the question?

And, maybe, T-Bone Burnett would produce it. After recent production stints on albums like the Crazy Heart soundtrack, John Mellencamp's last three records, Elvis Costello's National Ransom and the underrated Elton John/Leon Russell collaboration, The Union, it can be a challenge to work out what it is Burnett brings to his projects. All are good, don't get me wrong, but it's with this album by Lisa Marie Presley that I've finally recognized that Burnett has a unique way of making American roots music moody. So Long is the perfect example - a darkly jaunty song, and another about farewells, it could so easily have been another Achy Breaky Heart in others' hands. Under Burnett, it lacks gloss - and that's just perfect.

As its principle lyricist, Presley treads the time-honoured tradition of using the album as part-confessional, part-exorcism for old ghosts. The death of second husband Michael Jackson can't be ruled out as one influence, but it seems that, now happily married for a fourth time with children running around, the contemplation Storm & Grace provides is to expunge all the other detritus life gathers as you reach your forties - and in Presley's case, a famous childhood included.

"In the past, I was terrified," she recently told an American newspaper. "I’d be nervous and worried about comparisons [to Elvis]”. On this record, I was starting from zero. But I soon realized I was going to be OK. I found a proper bed for my voice and songwriting to lie in."

That voice is a relatively low register, well suited to the sombre quality of this album. There are, however, tracks like Sticks And Stones that might have been better suited to a Jewel or Sheryl Crow (and, unfortunately, makes her sound a little too much Cher...). Then there are songs like Un-break which stray too far from the dark folk elsewhere, offering instead flat pop-rock with a few bits of Beatley psychedelia going on. So Long, goes for a poppier, jangly groove, but lacks the shadow that the rest of the album - and especially the Hawley and Harcourt co-composed tracks reside in to their credit.

Surprisingly, however, Lisa Marie - Rock'n'Roll's first and only princess (and certainly the only rock child I know of with a jet named after her) - spends half the year living in Britain - rural Kent, the garden of England, to be precise, which might explain her exposure to the UK's songwriting talent.

That she spends the other half of the year divided between Los Angeles and Memphis might explain the cultural split that defines the patchwork that exists on Storm & Grace.

That's not flag-waving sentiment - it's just that the rootsier end of the American songbook represented on this album seems to emanate, strangely, from Sheffield's Hawley and London's Harcourt, whose writing crops up twice more Soften The Blows, a more traditional, lap steel-infused country ballad, and the shuffle Storm Of Nails.

And what of Fran Healy? The Berlin-based Glaswegian provides the music to one track, Heartless. Given that Healy has been acclaimed for opening the doors, musically, to Coldplay and Keane, amongst other melodic "bed wetters" (to quote Alan McGhee...), his contribution here doesn't tug the emotions as much as the album's more haunting tracks do. And in that category, you must include the closing song Just A Dream, written entirely by Lisa Marie herself.

On the tailfins of both private jets now permanently parked at Graceland in Memphis - the Corvair 880 named Lisa Marie and the smaller Jetstar used by Elvis - is the lighting flash logo and initials TCB: Taking Care of Business. This became Presley's signature, but it would appear that his daughter has decided to do the same with Storm & Grace. After one good and one take-it-or-leave-it AOR effort, her third visit to the recording studio has been worth it.

It's not perfect, but in skipping the two or three tracks out of eleven that don't work, you're still left with an album well worthy of the numerous talents behind it.

They think it's all over...and it is. Almost.

Since Christmas, Britain has experienced snow, April showers and autumnal winds. In March temperatures reached the 20s, prompting people to "flock to the beaches" (i.e. publicity-seeking, bikini-clad nubiles braving Brighton's pebbles for The Sun). In May, the coats, scarves and hats have come out again, while there has been a drought in the midst of torrential rains. Peversely, non-greenists continue to maintain that nothing is wrong with the climate.

Another group of perennial dismissers are those who run football. Pompous suits, all. You can hear them trumpet away on topics such as all-seat stadia ("No, no, no! No need!"...until a Hillsborough or Heysel comes along) or goal-line technology ("No, no, no! No need!"...er...until everyone says it's a good thing and FIFA's 'leadership' agree that it should be 'investigated').

The same breed of besuited mandarins is also responsible for ensuring the final weeks of the domestic football season in England plays out like the local weather. Last weekend the FA Cup Final took place - as much the season's finale as The Community Shield is the "Traditional Season Opener™".  However, no sooner had Chelsea lifted the trophy they were following a dejected Liverpool up the motorway to play them again just three days later in a league fixture originally scheduled for the lunchtime of Cup Final Saturday.

Normally Cup Final Saturday is so sacrosanct that nothing, not even weddings, funerals, Papal coronations or Simon Cowell, would schedule against it, let alone other football matches. That didn't seem to bother those in charge who thought it OK to sneak in a lunchtime fixture for TV viewers in Malaysia, pushing the Cup Final to the positively unholy kick-off time of 5.15pm so that ITV could get a bigger audience for the only show with an alleged title, Britain's Got Talent.

Order, I'm pleased to say, was restored over this last weekend. With officially the final Barclays Premier League matches kicking off simultaneously at 3pm on Sunday, there was one more afternoon of nail biting before settlement of what has been, on balance, a good season. Since last August we have watched two parts of Manchester jostle for the top spot -  old money versus new, a wily Scot versus a scarf-wearing Italian, a team mixing the very young with the exceedingly old against a group of apparent mercenaries with a fireworking-launching lunatic amongst them.

I'm glad Manchester City won it. It helps to shake the tree every now and again. Over the years, Leeds, Blackburn, Newcastle and Chelsea have disrupted the patterns of dominance by Manchester United and Arsenal. It's good for the game for a team to wipe hubris off the face of the incumbent.

City have endured a lot over the years, not least of which having a neighbour like United, a team who have 'bought' the title so often simply by being bloody good, having - annoyingly - the best manager of all time, and generating money to bring in the best players as well as develop them.

Manchester City - like Chelsea - have applied their newly-minted wealth but, as we all know, you can have all the money in the world but that doesn't buy you a team,  or team spirit. Roberto Mancini has achieved that, against the odds perhaps. What he has to do now is prevent any implosion. Don't forget, Blackburn Rovers won the Premier League in 1995, buoyed by the money of steel magnate Jack Walker. Today they are contemplating life in the Championship next season. Despite being now bankrolled by a group of Indian poulterers.

If you're looking for further evidence of a great season, however, I wouldn't bother looking below the two Manchesters. With the exception of Newcastle, Arsenal, Tottenham and Chelsea have staged pretty dismal seasons - taking everything into account - in their pursuit of a third or fourth place and a tilt at next year's Champions League. Arsenal have dribbled (in the baby/elderly chap sense) their way through another potless season, coming third. Perhaps Arsenal should consider themselves proud to finish ahead of Spurs and Chelsea, but...well, really. Do bronze medalists ever get remembered?

Their London rivals can hardly look proud, either. Tottenham were doing alright until their manager's head was turned by an England job he didn't get, while Chelsea's season only really took off when the manager's job was taken away from him.

But let's not forget Newcastle. Hats should be darkening the skies of Tyneside for Alan Pardew's side this season.

A team built with a fraction of the money Roberto Mancini had to spend at Manchester City, they just got on with it, demonstrating resilience and a delightful propensity to entertain, usually against the traffic.

Despite three relatively poor final games, to end fifth and to have come as close as they have to an even higher finish - including a spot in the Champions League next season - deserves a lot of credit, and Pardew in particular, the LMA Manager of the Season award.

Same goes to Everton, yet again. Season in, season out, David Moyes seems to perform the footballing equivalent of a Biblical miracle by keeping Everton in the top half of the table, despite being, by Premier League standards, the proverbial church mouse in the fiscal standings. But not only did Moyes lead them to seventh, but they finished above the case of irritable bowel syndrome that Liverpool were this season.

These are dark days at Anfield, and you get the sense that the night of the long knives - which has claimed director of football Damien Comolli and PR chief Ian Cotton - may not be over as Kenny Dalglish and his No.2 Steve Clark head to Boston to explain to the club's owners what went wrong this term.

The claim about Season 2011-12 does have some credence, of course, and not just because of the Manchester head-to-head. Fulham, West Brom under new England manager Roy Hodgson, Swansea under rising star Brendan Rodgers (who managed to take Liverpool's scalp on the final day of the season...), the remarkable, promoted Norwich, Martin O'Neill's recovering Sunderland and perennial battlers Stoke all produced spunky performances to regularly test the mettle of the big boys up top.

Down at the other end lie the inevitable casualties. Blackburn just weren't in it all season, with the unpopular Steve Kean undermined by a hateful crowd and irrelevant ownership. Wolves just lost the plot - but they'll be back, they usually do -  and Bolton, sadly, simply weren't contenders. Yes, Fabrice Muamba's recovery was nothing short of miraculous, but that was the only marvel in an otherwise underwhelming and underperforming run of games that ends 11 straight years in the top flight.

And what of those teams who hovered over the trap door? Aston Villa, that proud and noble Birmingham institution, slid execrably almost out of the top flight, recording just 10 wins all season-long. Alex McLeish has now paid the price. True, he had the fans against him from the moment he arrived at Villa Park from the other side of Birmingham, but then he knew he'd have his work cut out, and give supporters something to get behind. He didn't.

QPR can consider themselves lucky, on the other hand. For all the money they've been given, 17th position is an abject outcome.

Mark Hughes is a good manager, even if his teams are a little rough around the edges, but he has sailed close to nonchalance this season, apparently unworried by everything, even as descent back into the Championship loomed nearer.

Perhaps his preparations for next season will commence with a revision on the wisdom of granting the captain's armband to the self-appointed Plato of Twitter, Joey Barton. On the last day of the season he revealed his true colors as a player unnaturally blessed in the dark arts of the psychopath. Time for a rethink there on both sides.

So, yes, on balance it has been a good season. A new name on the trophy and another reason for Liam Gallagher to be insufferable.

And what about Chelsea? I know, I haven't mentioned their league performance at all. Frankly it only really started on March 4 when Roberto Di Matteo took over from Andre Villas-Boas. They deserve to come sixth. I know they've transformed under Di Matteo, and I know they could have finished fourth or higher as a result, but then that would be a joke. No, sixth is the right outcome for this season.

As for their fortunes in the Champions League - different story. Being the superstitious football fan that I am, I'm not going to tempt fate by calling Saturday's final in Munich. But maybe - just maybe - things might go well against a demoralized Bayern Munich, trounced 5-2 in the German Cup Final on Saturday in what was - please note - the final game of the season. As it should be...

There's one in every town

In most municipalities you will find, rolling a ciggie outside a pub, an unwavering and authentic throwback, a walking museum and lifestyle rolled into one. "White face, black shirt/White socks, black shoes", as Ian Dury sang in his tribute to Gene Vincent - "There's one in every town".

Sheffield has one. His name is Richard Hawley. Amid the South Yorkshire city's other music luminaries - Joe Cocker, ABC, Heaven 17, Def Leppard, Human League, Arctic Monkeys and Pulp - Hawley stands out like a Wednesday shirt in the home end of Bramall Lane, residing in a unique niche of British pop music.

Over several acclaimed albums like Lady's Bridge and the ethereal Truelove's Guitar - named after parts of the Steel City - the bequiffed Hawley has attached his distinctively swoonsome 50s croon to melodic guitar rock, rockabilly, introspective country ballads and sweeping, strings-ahoy epics.

RIchard Hawley is blessed with a voice of sumptuous timbre, evocative of Jim Reeves, Johnny Cash and Matt Munro in its ease, and resonant of Morrissey, Nick Cave and Ian McCulloch in its bass. Add a prodigious family talent for music and, in his specific case, a talent for guitar (which has earned Hawley work with his friend and fellow Sheffielder, Jarvis Cocker, as well as a spot in the Pulp touring band, an appearance on Robbie Williams' debut solo album and the solo on All Saints' cover of Under The Bridge - plus diverse collaborations with Elbow, Nancy Sinatra, Paul Weller, and even guitarist-über-alles, Hank Marvin.

In spite of - or despite of - he remains something of an enigma, comfortable in his 'appy-to-be-in-the-corner-with-me-Guinness demeanor, extolling the melodic simplicity of the musical era his vocal talent was clearly designed to indulge. Don't, however, be mistaken into thinking the retro image - greased-back hair and vintage guitars - is the affectation of pastiche, of a tribute act lacking the desire to go the whole hog in a sequined jumpsuit.

"I'm a cheesy fucker," he told Uncut more than ten years ago. "All those influences [Reeves, Cash, etc]  are just in there. It's not that I'm against aggression and fast beats, but I'm convinced that when you reveal a more vulnerable side, it takes more bravery than shouting."

Ten years on, Hawley is still not shouting, but his latest - Standing By The Sky's Edge - finds the 45-year-old shaking a fist at a troubled world, and he does so with an album that may come as a shock to a fan base used to the gently-tempered ballads of past releases.

From the beginning, Standing By The Sky's Edge is an unexpectedly energetic explosion of psychedelia, huge power chords and reverb so cavernous it only stops when it meets Dante's ice cream van somewhere near the bottom. Wherever that might be.

She Brings The Sunlight, with it's Beatley opening and Eastern flavor, contains the darkly feelgood soundstage of a Gallagher festival pleaser, pushing its vocal into the back line amplification where it waits for a couple of trippy guitar solos to kick in mid-way through.

Clearly impressed with what you can do with echo and feedback, Standing At The Sky's Edge's title track starts like a Morricone score, half expecting Jon Bon Jovi to start singing "I'm wanted dead or alive". Such a song title might suggest a huge vista for contemplating life, Hawley's own version of Grand Canyon (Lawrence Kasdan's saccharine tale of Los Angelinos trying to discover their bigger purpose in front of the superlative scale of the Arizonan wonder). But no. Instead it is an uncompromising reflection of urban blight, set in yet another Sheffield location (Skye Edge), a notorious district where so many and so much has been denied.

Time Will Bring You Winter takes the tone of Standing At The Sky's Edge into even more unlit territory, Hawley's effect-filtered voice pushing itself up out of another enormous dollop of distorted, reverb-treated guitars before Down In The Woods chugs away with a further humungous saga of thundering bass and guitar amps turned up way past 11 and already on their way to 20.

After the aural assault of the first four songs Hawley treads a gentler path with Seek It, a quirkily beautiful love song built over a strangely familiar jangly guitar motif. Hawley would probably hate to be compared to Chris Isaak, but Seek It highlights just how similar the two singers are, and not because of a shared love of hair product and Gretsch semi-acoustics. Isaak may be more Hollywood, and Hawley more Hollyoaks, but their enjoyably nourish sound befits both a David Lynch soundtrack and a northern bedsit in equal measure.

From such gentility, Hawley returns with another five-minute epic, Don't Stare At The Sun. Commencing with a gently airy shuffle, and gradually building to a crescendo redolent of John Barry, the song is, however, about nothing more dramatic than Hawley taking his son to nearby fields to fly a kite. It's dark tonality, though, hints at something else, a warning, perhaps, that the innocence of childhood is fast becoming too fragile in today's world.

Standing At Sky's Edge has dark, it has shade, and it has light. Breathtaking and then surprising by turns, at times it drags you by the scruff of the neck while at others it leads you by the hand.

There are also times when you're just not so sure what it's doing, which is just fine. That is Hawley's gift, but beware - the look doesn't paint the complete picture of what Sheffield's very own Gene Vincent is about.

One thing is so - Standing At Sky's Edge may just be 56 of the most invigorating musical minutes you will enjoy this year. Simply, a stunning record.

Can you spare me some change?

I’m not sure when the glossy French magazine Le Point went to press with its brand new edition, but the front cover declaring Francois Hollande “Le Président” seems a tad presumptuous.

Still, it was clear that Nicolas Sarkozy went into yesterday’s presidential runoff with the rope burns on his lower back still red-raw from the first round of elections two weeks ago.

In the end, the final round was decisive, though hardly a TKO - Hollande winning by just 3% of the vote in an election which saw an impressive 81% of the French electorate turning out to vote.

The outcome was a vote for change. “Un choix historique”, trailed Le Figaro on Saturday morning, requiring little embellishment with the follow-up this morning: “François Hollande président”, with Les Echos going with the more emphatic “François Hollande à l’épreuve du pouvoir” (“Francois Hollande has stood the test of power”), an endorsement of the president-elect's lack of experience in public office.

Like Britain in 1997, France has decided that 17 years of centre-right conservative rule had to end, beckoning a form of post-modern socialism to address what Hollande had claimed was the failure of the Sarkozy economic approach. Actually, France has voted for normality in abnormal times, a vote as much for more agreeable grocery bills each week (which, if mine in Paris are anything to go by, are horrendous nationwide) as much for the Élysées Palace to be occupied by someone with less stardust and fewer famous connections.

Quite how normal France will become under the somewhat dry Hollande remains to be seen. He has promised to increase taxes by Eur 40 billion to fund increased public spending, at a time when the French budget deficit needs to be reduced by Eur 18 billion over the next year or so. That will hurt the wealthy – and it remains to be seen just what threshold the description “wealthy” crosses. Those at the top end of corporate remuneration will certainly have their salaries come under scrutiny: on the campaign stump Hollande promised to raise taxes on the country’s biggest corporate citizens, with individuals earning more than a million euros a year facing a tax rate as high as 75%.

Certainly Hollande will push to invest in the public sector, including education (he used to be a teacher), creating 60,000 new teaching jobs in the process to boost France’s educational base in the global economy. With a despondent French youth bearing the brunt of austerity, such measures will go a long way to instil a sense of hope in a country where, away from the swank of Paris and its obvious opulence, hope has gone wanting.

Inevitably, however, France’s domestic challenges will continue to be played out on the European stage. Hollande has argued throughout his campaign that austerity measures in the Eurozone have failed and that the EU needs to reset its thinking. No surprise, then, that at the top of Hollande’s dance card is the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. Hollande wants to redefine the EU agreement on financial discipline; Merkel has said “nein” to revisiting the fiscal pact. Compromise seems inevitable, but there is still a lot to be done to appease the European stock markets, with the euro dropping as bourses opened on Monday morning (though notably London was closed for, ironically, the May Day holiday).

Challenging the mechanism of restriction (“austerity can no longer be the only option”) won’t calm nervous investors in Europe, either. Hollande is an unknown quantity as far as experience of government is concerned, but despite his socialist colours, no revolutionary either. “The left should embody grand hopes,” Hollande was quoted in Saturday’s Le Monde, adding: “but it must not reduce itself to grand moments”. His goal is a long-term transformation of France and French society. That, for now, appears a long way off.

Hollande was born in Rouen, the focus of vicious fighting between British and German forces in the aftermath of D-Day. A prescient historic detail for the incoming president, a relatively sombre personality going into battle against the abstemious economic mood. But compared with the man he replaces, criticised for his lifestyle and friends, the highly educated Hollande is more administrator than showboat political superstar. And that, perhaps, is what France wants. What he will have to remember is that D-Day represented only the first 24 hours of French liberation. A long campaign lay ahead before VE Day – on May 8, 1945. 72 years ago tomorrow.

135 minutes late, tradition still intact

You really didn't want to be around me yesterday. Think of the most excited seven-year-old on Christmas morning, then amplify that level of annoying to the power of ten. Then you'd be getting close to what I was like. Then add in mild traces of hangover, thanks to indulging in White Russians with visiting rock stars at 2.30 in the morning.

I was probably best left alone, but that's pretty much how I should always be on FA Cup Final Saturday. I am just too excited by a spectacle, an event, an amassing of people around the world to watch a football match that will conclude several months of endeavour for both the biggest and the smallest teams in England.

This year, however, some chinless arse chose to move the fixture from its traditional kick-off to 5.15pm. 5.15pm on a Saturday is not a football kick-off time - it's when the news starts, or a Tom & Jerry cartoon, or some ghastly entertainment show with Noel Edmonds. Not the FA Cup Final.

The Cup Final kicks off at 3pm. End of discussion. It doesn't get moved to accommodate a lunchtime kickoff elsewhere, as there shouldn't be any other matches taking place on Cup Final Saturday. Nor should it be taking place at teatime simply to build an audience for Britain's Got Talent, or some other God-awful alleged talent show with a similarly grammatically-challenged name.

The FA Cup Final is more than just a football match. It is THE football match. It's a global event, watched around the world by 60 million people, the climax to the oldest football competition in the world. It is about tradition, which is why yesterday's final between Chelsea and Liverpool was about more than just whether it was a decent 90 minutes of football or not.

To the non-footballist, that might sound absurd, but the reason for my childlike skittishness each year - regardless of whether my team features in it or not - is what the Cup Final represents. Over successive years since I was a child, the Cup Final meant being in front of the TV at noon to watch the build-up - interviews with players present and old, the pundits and the minor celebrities who suddenly come out of the woodwork with a declared interest for one of the finalists or the other. Or Bruce Forsyth, who manages to turn up in any case.

Before the kick-off you have the obligatory live shots of the team buses arriving at Wembley, the players  walking across the Hallowed Turf™in their Cup Final suits, and then, as the teams start their warm-up routines, an hour or so of endless conjecture from anyone with a half-opinon about how the game will go.

Being at the game itself is a different experience altogether. There is nothing - nothing - to compare with hearing 80,000 people at Wembley singing Abide With Me followed by God Save The Queen (the original version, I should add, not the Sex Pistols' cover....) before the match gets underway, and then watching the incongruous sight of the regimental band of the Grenadier Guards criss-crossing the turf at half-time playing Colonel Bogey's March on something similarly rousing.

The "magic of the cup" might be a phrase you'll hear bandied about going back to the very early stages of the competition, when non-league clubs commence their well-intentioned efforts to proceed to later rounds when they might come up against professional league opposition.

And thus, come May, the denouement takes place at Wembley. It's a knockout competition, so the two teams have survived through guile, cunning and little luck along the way. They may not always be the best teams, either, but that doesn't matter, as the football is only just one component of Cup Final Saturday.

This year's Cup Final had an odd component to it, and not just because of the fact someone had tampered with the kick off time. Chelsea's season didn't seem to start until March 4, when Roberto Di Matteo was installed as "interim first team coach" and results, team unity and Fernando Torres' shooting boots all started to go the right way.

Liverpool have had a similarly indifferent season, with an expensive striker (Carroll) proving profligate in front of goal, and manager Kenny Dalglish - the closest thing to a saint, the Dalai Lama and royalty rolled into one person on Merseyside - facing questions from even the most loyal Scousers as to whether he is doing the right thing for the club.

By half-time yesterday, most pundits were commenting that the 131st FA Cup Final was a tepid affair. Ramires' clever goal putting Chelsea ahead at the interval, but that's all. When has this been ever different? It's hard to remember the last FA Cup Final that was an exciting display of football, of intelligent passing and clever build-play, of tactical ingenuity and perfect finishing. Watch any tie in the earlier rounds and you'll see 'win at any cost' being the motto. And that's why the Final itself is so much more the sum of its parts. Tradition, as I've said before, counts aplenty.

That Didier Drogba scored in his fourth FA Cup Final yesterday, that Ashley Cole has now amassed a record seven FA Cup winner's medals, and that Di Matteo became the third Italian manager in a row to win the trophy, on top of the fact he made records as a player (1997 - scoring for Chelsea on just 43 seconds), underlines the romance of the FA Cup and what it means to play or to watch it.

Yesterday's game may not have been perfect, but in many ways it was. Blues versus Reds, two teams who've played each other more than any one else over the last decade, a team that was going nowhere fast now competing for the two biggest club competitions in the game, and the seemingly fairytale of a caretaker manager who keeps pulling off remarkable successes (played 18, won 12, drawn 4, lost 2).

So it was a couple of hours late? The Magic of The Cup still exists. Roll on Munich.

In praise of The Quiet Man

“Do not underestimate the determination of the quiet man,” is the oft-quoted protestation of former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith who, during his time running the blue faction of British politics, rarely demonstrated any form of impactful oratorial qualities, and was ritually "shushed" ironically by Opposition MPs whenever he stood at the dispatch box.

With an acronymic name like IDS he didn't stand a chance. It sounds too much like "IBS" to survive in an environment of formerly playground-bullied bed-wetters like the House of Commons. Not that Ed Balls exactly comes off any better in the realm of tauntably-named politicians.

Anyway, I have no interest at all in former Tory leaders but, instead, today, I concern myself with the fortunes of Roy Hodgson, the softly-spoken Croydon lad who took the silent route to seniority in his football management career by pursuing that unlikely of English sporting paths - moving abroad. And he has now been unveiled as the next England manager.

When Woy, sorry, Roy, pitched up at the newly-minted Blackburn Wo...er...Rovers in 1997 he had already managed four Swedish clubs - Halmstad, Oddevold, Örebro and Malmö - along with Swiss outfit Neuchâtel and the Swiss national side itself. Not to mention a little club in Italy by the name of Internazionale.

Only Kate Moss has since eclipsed Hodgson in making good of a Croydon upbringing on the global stage. Actually, Hodgson may have reclaimed that crown by the time he accepted Mohammed Al Fayed's pieces of silver in 2007 to manage Fulham, having added a second spell at Inter, the Zurich club Grasshopper, FC Copenhagen, Udinese, the United Arab Emirates,Viking in Norway and the Finnish national team to his CV. And since then a sorry spell at a politically fractious Liverpool and, until the end of this season, a solid but unspectacular stint at the Hawthorns running West Bromwich Albion.

On paper, this collective expertise makes him an obvious choice for the vacant England manager's position. So why is it that, until Sunday evening when the FA took the unprecedented step of pre-announcing Hodgson as the only candidate to be interviewed for the job, the nation had collectively installed Harry Redknapp in the role - almost as soon as Fabio Capello flounced out of the Wembley in a huff over John Terry's sacking?

Indeed, it wouldn't be unfair to say that news on Sunday evening of Hodgson being invited in to meet the FA's four-man selection panel - David Bernstein, Alex Horne, Sir Trevor Brooking and Adrian Bevington - came as a surprise to Hodgson himself.

Hodgson is in stark contrast to "Flash" Harry, whose wheeler-dealer history and bright orange wife has made him as much a character form Minder as one of the most prolific club managers in England. And yet, we all thought the England job was his.

Even his February residency at Southwark Crown Court on tax evasion charges didn't swerve our opinion that he was a shoe-in at the end of the season to take over England and take them into Euro 2012 in Ukraine and Poland. In fact it may even have, in our twisted football-supporter logic, galvanised our view that he'd be ideal. This is the same twisted logic that regarded the Krays as folk heroes, not that I'm lumping Redknapp in the same company, but you know what I mean - we love a lovable rogue.

By all accounts, it didn't necessarily swerve the FA, either. So why did they, all of a sudden, go exclusively for a manager who'd hitherto been mentioned as a "possible" also-ran in the betting, along with Newcastle's Alan Pardew, Glen Hoddle (again), Jose Mourinho (no chance) and current caretaker Stuart Pearce?

Redknapp's fiscal challenges and residual reputational issues may have warded off the Football Association. If there is one thing we know about the FA, they are as adept at avoiding scandal as a Parisian is at dodging street-strewn dog poo. Just ask Glenn Hoddle and his, erm, beliefs.

Then there is talk that Redknapp had a very different view to the FA's longer-term vision. What, then, makes Hodgson more appropriate? He has held 19 managerial positions - some barely a single season long - and not in that time picked up any silverware. Granted, he took the Swiss national side to Number 3 in the world rankings, and he has demonstrated an ability to man-manage average-looking sides to mid-table mediocrity. That's no criticism. The facts speak for themselves.

Hodgson may be no more than a middle-management civil servant being given his chance - at 64 - to step up to run the one department not on his CV. His journeyman resumé suggests average managerial talent, and his reputation for a somewhat old-fashioned - some might even say stale - style of training does not necessarily indicate a new broom about to breathe new life into England's jaded, over-pampered, overpaid superstars, whose hubris has been repeatedly lanced by excess expectation turning to disappointment.

However: "He is probably the best man-manager I worked with," former Swedish international Stefan Schwarz told the Daily Telegraph. "He had the knack of knowing when to give a player a kick up the backside and when to build them up." To that, Schwarz cites Hodgson's skills in dealing with problems  and, countering rumblings from one or two of Liverpool's malcontnents, a professional approach on the training pitch. Swiss international Ramon Vega echoed this sentiment, who claims Hodgson has a good tactical approach. We shall see.

Hodgson will have to win over the current crop of England stars. Today's Sun helpfully noted that, with Twitter the unofficial channel of record for just about every professional footballer these days, there was absolutely no reaction at all when news emerged from Wembley on Sunday that Hodgson was to be interviewed. In contrast, when Capello quit, England players couldn't wait to install Redknapp (“Harry Redknapp would be my choice by a distance,” tweeted Rio Ferdinand while Wayne Rooney posted: “Gutted Capello has quit. Got to be English to replace him. Harry Redknapp for me.”).

Perhaps Hodgson is ideal for England. For too long we have regarded ourselves as world champions-in waiting, whereas in reality anyone else around the world sees England as anything but. We may well have invented the modern game, but in the almost 46 years since we last won a trophy, our footballing prowess has been determined more by the wheelbarrows of cash being lugged around the Premier League rather than any on-pitch ability with which we could be truly compared to the likes of Spain, Brazil, the Dutch, Italy or even the United States.

Bringing in an experienced but unspectacular manager like Hogdson, with his subtle urbanity and suburban newsagent's demeanour, may be the best decision the FA could make. We're not going to win anything anytime soon, so we might as well bring in a manager who'll ensure we won't lose too badly either.

This is the key to judging England. I was recently admonished by a Dutchman of some considerable wisdom who said: "You English think too highly of yourselves, and that's why you'll never win anything. You go into every tournament thinking you are supposed to win it, when in reality there are better sides, like Spain. They win without expectation, England lose because of it." Well, true. What was it that gave us the right to believe we were the best in the world? 1966? The Premier League?

The England job, we all know, is football's most tainted poisoned chalice. Your time in the job is spent like James Bond in Live And Let Die, stepping stone-leaping across the open mouths of snapping media alligators. No one is safe, no one is immune. Even Stuart Pearce has suffered all the usual slings and arrows and he's only been in temporary charge. Will Hodgson be able to handle this any better? Redknapp certainly would have done. During his lengthy tenure of West Ham and time in charge of Portsmouth, Southampton and Spurs he has been able to deftly balance egos and modest budgets, giving him at least one vital skill for managing England.

However, since Redknapp was first pre-installed as England boss by the unofficial selection committee on Twitter the wheels have started to loosen at Tottenham. The suggestion is that the England job turned Redknapp's head and, in the process his focus. Today, even with Spurs still, in theory, in with a shout of Champions League football next season, you could hardly say that the north London club is poised to challenge the Manchesters for the top spot any time soon.

And given that Redknapp's trophy cabinet isn't any more full than Hodgson, is he really - today at least - any better a candidate for the job than Hodgson? Harry Redknapp might be a more colourful character, but this may be the time for the Quiet Man to step in and take over an impossible job.

Stop press: Owls that look like Roy Hodgson - here!