1. THE EXCEPTION THAT PROVES THE RULE
Personally, I think that Hayden's debut album, 1995's Everything I Long For, is one of the best Canadian albums ever recorded. It is passionate, inventive, joyful, raw, profound, disturbing, sad, and pretty much anything else you could ask from any single album. Every song was a perfectly placed curveball.
It wasn't a folk album, but it really was, and it wasn't punk, but there was definitely something punky about it. It was a garage rock record with minimal rocking out but a lot of the garage. Along with bands like The Sebadoh and Pavement and other singer-songwriters such as the great Richard Buckner, Everything I Long For helped to usher in a new wave of D.I.Y. recordings that didn't care much about perfect pitch and missed notes, and didn't sand down the rough edges, but rather embraced them and moved them to the fore.
Hayden's debut album reinvented, rebranded folk music for a new generation. It made it human again.
Hayden's debut album reinvented, rebranded folk music for a new generation. It made it human again.
After Everything I Long For, Hayden released an excellent E.P. called Pots and Pans that bristled with the same energy and inventiveness as that debut. And then something happened. Specifically, Hayden got mired in record company business. After the success of the first album the majors came calling as they do, and Hayden got jerked around and things slowed to a crawl. Three years after the debut came out he released his follow-up, The Closer I Get.
It was okay.
The songwriting was pretty good, and the performances were strong, but there was something different. It was settled. It felt resigned. It sat back and watched the world go by, instead of getting up in the world's face. That trademark whisper to a scream was missing, Hayden realizing he'd destroy his voice if he kept it up much longer.
It was okay.
The songwriting was pretty good, and the performances were strong, but there was something different. It was settled. It felt resigned. It sat back and watched the world go by, instead of getting up in the world's face. That trademark whisper to a scream was missing, Hayden realizing he'd destroy his voice if he kept it up much longer.
I remember reading a review of the album at the time which quoted the lyrics from the song bullet, "I found a bullet outside my door, I think it's me it was intended for," and lamented that the bullet didn't find Hayden and put him and us both out of our miseries. A little overly harsh, but on the right track. There was certainly something whiny about the whole affair.
It was okay. It was essentially ignored.
Hayden was dropped or left the big leagues and recorded Skyscraper National Park, which was released independently in 2001 with an initial run of 100 copies packaged in handmade covers. Humble.
It was okay. It was essentially ignored.
Hayden was dropped or left the big leagues and recorded Skyscraper National Park, which was released independently in 2001 with an initial run of 100 copies packaged in handmade covers. Humble.
This third album was another step away from the punkish energy of the debut, but a step back up in the quality control department. But it found Hayden solidifying a new sound, on that combined almost California-style breeze pop a la The Eagles, with Neil Young's Harvest Moon era mope rock. It was a startling flip from his earlier work, but a positive one.
Three years later came Elk-Lake Serenade, which was, for the most part, more of the same that we heard on Skyscraper National Park: Solid songwriting, solid performances and the whatnot. A good album.
2. WAKE ME UP IN 2011; OR, IN FIELD & TOWZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Now, 2008, comes In Field & Town, at which there are to ways of looking:
1) Hayden's output is so slow, like molasses, that it's cool that he doesn't really, you know... Do anything new anymore, because we're not being bombarded with material. He's slipped into a groove. He does what he does, and he does it better than anyone else.
1) Hayden's output is so slow, like molasses, that it's cool that he doesn't really, you know... Do anything new anymore, because we're not being bombarded with material. He's slipped into a groove. He does what he does, and he does it better than anyone else.
Or alternately:
2) Seriously, dude, if you're going to spend three or four years on each record experiment a bit for fuck's sake. Do something, anything, that differentiates your one album from your other. You've slipped into a rut, a deep rut, and at this point you're just wasting our time. Climb out now, or soon we're going to find you dead at the bottom clutching your acoustic guitar to your chest. Go sky-diving, drive over the speed limit, try heroin, buy a Zappa album. Anything.
2) Seriously, dude, if you're going to spend three or four years on each record experiment a bit for fuck's sake. Do something, anything, that differentiates your one album from your other. You've slipped into a rut, a deep rut, and at this point you're just wasting our time. Climb out now, or soon we're going to find you dead at the bottom clutching your acoustic guitar to your chest. Go sky-diving, drive over the speed limit, try heroin, buy a Zappa album. Anything.
3. THE SONGS
The problem here is that there is no inventiveness. The album is lazy, vocally and musically. Every song has Hayden singing identically to pretty much every other song, no higher, no deeper, no more impassioned, no less; occasionally he strains for a high note... Occasionally, as in "about once per track." In every song, the music is the same as Hayden's vocal melody, without any counter at pretty much any point.
The album kicks off with the title track, the funkiest thing Hayden's ever laid down. It's a propitious beginning, driving along on a repetitive bass line that flies in the face of the dour lyrics: "We're like spokes in the wheel of some bike in a field, or we're riding along through the streets before dawn, with no sense of what's right or wrong."
The album kicks off with the title track, the funkiest thing Hayden's ever laid down. It's a propitious beginning, driving along on a repetitive bass line that flies in the face of the dour lyrics: "We're like spokes in the wheel of some bike in a field, or we're riding along through the streets before dawn, with no sense of what's right or wrong."
Lyrically, Hayden's always a bit of an anomaly; he writes character sketches that are almost uncomfortably personal in their detail, with deceptively poetic lyrics. He's mellowed out some, which is to be expected. His love songs aren't quite so zealous, and his tragic songs are more subtle. (Nothing here like the old man from "Skates," whose wife drowned in the river behind their house, so he buys a pair of ice skates, waits for the river to freeze over and travels up and down so he can find her...)
The jaunty "The Van Song" takes it's structure from the film Memento, building a relationship by going back a step with each reveal: "And on the bus before that they looked at us, some of them happy, some of them sad; some of them liked us and some of them not. And the day before that, that was the one we met..." It's a nice device, evoking the feeling of young, new love perfectly, and tonally the song is a nice, though minor, deviation from the rest of the disc, with Shaun Brodie's trumpet parts bringing a bit of extra life to the table.
The jaunty "The Van Song" takes it's structure from the film Memento, building a relationship by going back a step with each reveal: "And on the bus before that they looked at us, some of them happy, some of them sad; some of them liked us and some of them not. And the day before that, that was the one we met..." It's a nice device, evoking the feeling of young, new love perfectly, and tonally the song is a nice, though minor, deviation from the rest of the disc, with Shaun Brodie's trumpet parts bringing a bit of extra life to the table.
"Did I Wake Up Beside You?" turns into a bit of a Neil Young-style wankfest with almost two and a half minutes remaining, the band (well, Howie Beck on drums and Hayden on everything else) droning on under a sloppy guitar solo that uses minimal notes. Fifteen or twenty seconds would have sufficed: Two and a half minutes -almost exactly half of the song's running time- is simply boring. Before it drops off into this unnecessary jam it's a great song, with the it-turns-out-prohetic line "We started out so nice, and we ended caught in the traps we thought were only set on our parents watch."
One of my issues with the album is the tone. The songs are basically all about a relationship in it's trouble stage, before the break-up, and so they all have a cloud above them, and even when Hayden does try to break out of the box with his arrangements or the instrumentation, the tricks become nothing more than bows slapped on a depressing package.
These aren't bad songs. But this is a mediocre album.
If I was to put my iTunes library on shuffle, I would be perfectly happy whenever one of these tracks popped up. But put them together, one after another, and what you have is what's generally called an unrelenting downer, which is fine, but an unrelenting downer that brings nothing new to the party is pointless.
These aren't bad songs. But this is a mediocre album.
If I was to put my iTunes library on shuffle, I would be perfectly happy whenever one of these tracks popped up. But put them together, one after another, and what you have is what's generally called an unrelenting downer, which is fine, but an unrelenting downer that brings nothing new to the party is pointless.
4. WHAT IT BOILS DOWN TO
Hayden clearly has skills, but unfortunately he knows what they are too well, he knows where his comfort zone lies too well, and he's uninterested in breaking out of said zone. What he needs is someone to challenge him, to push him in new directions. He needs a muse. He needs an adventure. In the three or four years between now and when his next album comes out maybe he can discover some new depths, some heretofore unknown musical directions.
If you've never heard Hayden before, this is as good a place as any to start. If you're familiar with his work already, this album is filled with exactly the kinds of things you've heard before, and not much else. Which, depending on your expectations, is either a good thing or a bad one.
___________________________________________________________________Click HERE to hear the excellent title track.
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