How do you follow up the massive, unexpected success of your last album? Well, if you're Richard Hawley, you just carry on like nothing has happened.

If anything, Lady's Bridge (named, like 2005’s Cole's Corner, after another Sheffield landmark) returns " Northern England's Johnny Cash" (not my words) to the bleaker moods he wallowed in on Late Night Final (2002) and Lowedges (2003). That's not to say there aren't upbeat songs here – latest single 'Tonight The Streets Are Ours' might be the most carefree song Hawley has put to tape – but the overwhelming atmosphere throughout is sorrowful and sodden with a dusky, heavy-eyed remorse. Richard Hawley, one feels, is a man who isn't surprised when a cloud turns up over a picnic.

As ever, the music feels familiar without being overly derivative, and the unobtrusive arrangements fit Hawley's simple melodies like a battered old pair of slippers. It's amusing to compare Richard Hawley's career & drift toward middle-age with that of his Britpop contemporaries: while Noel Gallagher grapples over choosing which fashionable scarf to drape around his neck and Rick Witter bores people at the bar, Richard Hawley, guitarist with the 54th most successful British indie band of the 90’s, finds the smoking pipe was moulded to the shape of his hand all along.

Lady's Bridge is more of the same from Hawley. There are no surprises here; no change in direction, no new approach, no concessions to current production vogues, no singing pointedly in the local dialect. Somehow, when Richard Hawley stays exactly the same, it feels encouraging, defiant even. If fellow Sheffield bands The Long Blondes and The Arctic Monkeys find themselves struggling to retain some kind of relevance after their moment in the sun has gone, they could do a lot worse than look to the example set by their musical grumpy uncle.

Pour yourself a stiff one, close your eyes and let the drizzle-drenched misery of Hawley's world wrap around you like a blanket. It's what summers were made for. (Ambrose Fischer)