“Cold city lights glowing, the traffic of life is flowing.” Blackpool, Friday evening. The wind blows along the North Pier towards the Irish Sea. Fish and chip shops and arcades squeeze out the last bits of summer trade. Large, five-star food hygiene rating signs are proudly displayed in café windows. 

Hen dos and trains of partygoers start to arrive. The sun drops behind the iconic Blackpool Tower, once the tallest man-made structure in the British Empire. Its 2,500 tons of steel and 5,000,000 Accrington bricks loom over the Lancashire coast as an act of self-pride for the people here. The seaside town is one of the poorest places in Europe with the lowest male life expectancy of anywhere in the UK, but it still has its charm. 

It’s a perfect setting for Richard Hawley to celebrate 25 years of one of his finest works, album number four, Coles Corner. Named after a place in Sheffield to meet for a first date, the album explores heartbreak, loss, and pain but it also has uplifting moments with some of the best production and dreamy guitars you’ll hear. The crowd is a collection of lost souls, couples, and a huge age range of fans that have come to pay homage to a great record by a great singer. 

Coles Corner was a last roll of the dice after Hawley was dropped by his label. It had to come off. Well, it did. There are no skips on it. A complete piece of art from start to finish. Would you put it on at a house party? Probably not. Would you listen to it stuck on a delayed train, staring out the window, thinking about the time your first girlfriend (that you’ve definitely moved on from) cheated on you? More likely. 

A musicians’ and critics’ favourite, Hawley is the Sheffield singer who eschews talking about fights with bouncers and pool cues, and sounds like something straight out of a ‘60s blues club; a fantastic pub singer who could have been taken from a Memphis Speakeasy and plonked into post-industrial Britain. 

Coles Corner ebbs and flows from the opening scene of the titular track one – “Hold back the night from us, Cherish the light for us. Don’t let the shadows hold back the dawn” – straight into Just Like the Rain – “I’ve walked a world of empty streets In search alone, I’ve searched alone.” By the 10th listen, you’ll know what song is coming next. Each is placed perfectly. Track five, The Ocean, has one of the great outros. 

You could read it as standalone poetry. Hawley is a master of the rhyming couplet. Take Tonight’s “the restlessness that’s in me, don’t do me any good, I know I really should stay home tonight, but I don’t think that I could” for instance, or Wading Through The Waters of My Time’s “Don’t look for me in lands of gold, I won’t be there, I won’t get old.”

When Alex Turner accepted the 2006 Mercury Prize for Arctic Monkeys’ iconic debut Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, he exclaimed on stage: “Someone call 999, Richard Hawley’s been robbed.” He was of course talking about Coles Corner which was up for the same award. Mojo described the album as “a glorious melange of love, loss, regret, homesickness and romance,” and it was included in Robert Dimery’s book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.  

Blackpool Tower is one of the most incredible venues to go to for a gig. You enter through a side door next to a gift shop and the entrance for the Blackpool Dungeons before going up a creaking lift. All of a sudden, you’re shown this amazing, three-tiered ballroom. There’s a sprung dancefloor, beautiful architecture, and chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. It’s just magnificent. 

Support comes from Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals, Gorillaz, and great solo career fame. He warms the crowd up with his dulcet, North Walian tones. Then, we’re into Hawley. 

There’s always a slight concern as to whether certain album tracks work live but because it’s such a strong record that isn’t a problem. He references time he spent in Blackpool as a kid and self-deprecates before Just Like the Rain: “I wrote this on my 16th birthday – proof I’ve always been a miserable fucker.” He mentions his grandad: “you’re a good kid but you’re as soft as a bag of tits”. Children, girlfriends – there’s nothing off limits for Hawley. 

Hawley’s vulnerable side opens him up as a performer, it’s what makes him what he is. In an interview with The Guardian last year, Hawley admitted: “I actually broke down during the recording of The Ocean. In the middle eight, after I sing ‘I assume, I assume’. I only just managed to hold it together.” When he plays it here, most people watching do the same thing. There’s only four chords in the entire song but the timeless, swelling waves of guitar crashing at the end stop you in your tracks. There are not many songs that can do that after you’ve listened to it so many times but it always delivers. Achingly so. 

The performance is as good as the record. Highlights include the hypnotically beautiful and sad Tonight which Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing fans will be familiar with, and Who’s Going to Shoe Your Pretty Feet, a song that Hawley used to sing his kids to sleep to, finishes off the record. The crowd are enraptured but we’re not done. The album is only 46 minutes so there’s more Hawley yet. More hits, more tunes. 

Tonight the Streets Are Ours, Don’t Stare at the Sun, Standing at the Sky’s Edge, Open Up Your Door – the discography is seriously impressive. He plays a total of 21 songs and looks the part: slicked back hair, sunnies on, teal jacket with huge collars. On anyone else, it would look a bit naff but Hawley pulls it off. 

As the crowd shuffles back to Blackpool North station to catch the last train, there’s the faint sound of a karaoke bar in the distance as drag queens pull groups of people into clubs. Are we in Blackpool or is this Memphis? When Richard Hawley’s in town, both things can be true. The world is fine by the ocean.