Hayden Harvests Neil Young's folk sound
Written: Feb 10 '08 (Updated Feb 10 '08)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: I suspect you'll like it.
Cons: I suspect you can't find it.
The Bottom Line: In Field & Town embodies everything I like and loathe about Hayden. Often at the same time.
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| headlessparrot's Full Review: In Field & Town - Hayden |
Hayden – that being the stage name of one Paul Hayden Desser, Toronto native and folk-rock not-quite-cult icon – embodies the classic narrative of the Canadian rock star, who heads south for greener pastures, ultimately returning in disappointment, a humbled prodigal son who has learned a critical lesson about the imperial values of American media – that the earnest little guy, guitar in hand and soul ready-to-bare, can’t make it in the shallow world where flash supersedes substance, and where everyone is a lecher, waiting to steal either your soul or your songs (whichever, they decide, is worth more). Unfortunately for his financial prospects, though, Hayden isn’t flashy. He’s not sexy, either. But he’s reliable, especially for that period in your life – I suspect that everyone has one – when you’re simply mesmerized by the exponentially affecting power of an acoustic guitar and some schlub enunciating trembling, delicate phrases. And, sexy or not, he’s kept a few mementos of his journey: a limited but ravenous fanbase, inclusion in the Metacritic review database, and the occasional write-up in Pitchfork, months after an album release, damning the songwriter with mild, noncommittal praise. In stuffing hotel amenities he in his suitcase on the way back from the big, bad, USA it seems, however, that he forgot to leave any name recognition behind. So, despite touring recently with the National (or maybe touring with the National is symptomatic of this), Hayden’s name mostly just elicits a collective, “huh?” from anyone not intimately familiar with Canadian semi-popular music or modern folk movements. Or both.
There are perhaps hundreds of folksy singer-songwriters on major record labels today, and many more to be found on the ‘significant’ independent labels. There are, presumably, hundreds more on minor, regional labels, and undoubtedly thousands who remain unsigned. Even assuming that Hayden is better than 95% of his acoustic troubadour peers, a quick statistical analysis suggests that there are at least twenty singer-songwriters in music today who are objectively better than he is (while I freely admit to pulling this number out of my ass, I’ll suggest that it’s based, rather reasonably, on what can only be an extremely conservative guess that there are some 2000 legitimate singer-songwriters currently crooning panties off in the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom). Considering, then, that Hayden has spent the majority of his career on a sub-indie level label (Hardwood Records, which he administrates himself, and which doesn’t even distribute outside of Canada), I can only conclude that a significant portion of his fan base exists out of some bizarre, longstanding sense of allegiance to him, dating back to his flirtation with major label success. I’m allowed to say this because I am one of those who carries, somewhat ambivalently, that sense of allegiance. But I’m also not so unaware as to try to convince you that Hayden is undeniably the greatest thing to happen to so-and-so (music, in this case) for years. Because he’s not. There was a time when that might have been the case, or when the potential was there. But Hayden has settled comfortably into a niche since then – recording, releasing, and touring in support of folksy albums that are pretty good, and pretty perfect in terms of the here and now (meaning that, while it won’t outlast him, and I might not even last – for me – six months from now, let alone year’s end, it seems perfectly suited to now, to me sitting, in February 2008, at my desk in St. Catharines, Ontario, and listening to new, good music). The album in question - In Field & Town - is his fifth. And granted, part of this reaction – and a lot of Hayden’s appeal as a whole – might also just stem from the fact that Hayden seems (and I can’t make a definitive personal judgement, because I don’t claim to know him) to be a really nice guy, who toils earnestly and in obscurity because he loves what he does. This is endearing, noble, and makes me more ready to forgive his faults.
You’re reading this and concluding already about In Field & Town, “so then it has no real replay value?” Which is true, maybe, but kind of pessimistic, and rather missing my point: that ‘staying power’ (or whatever you want to term it) isn’t my – and, I can only guess, your – first thought when you listen to an album. Instead, those initial bursts of brain chemistry are more accurately attuned to, “Well, do I like it?” And, yeah, that is, I’ll concede, an element of ferreting out the classics, but it ignores: 1) that I have to like a classic, 2) that classics are classic intrinsically, 3) that a classic is always what we’re looking for when we listen to music, and most importantly, 4) that longevity is really meaningful in a discussion of music, especially while we remain woefully incapable of seeing the future (point in case: I rarely, if ever, know what I’m going to have for lunch tomorrow, and this is something – unlike an album’s future importance – over which I have direct control). An interesting by-product of this theory, then, is that you pretty well can’t trust any four-star review I’ve written for more than, say, a month after I've written it. This is actually quite helpful, because it allows me to distance myself from the enthusiastic reviews I’ve given to the Vines’ Highly Evolved or Jane’s Addiction’s Strays in the past (not so much that I still won’t shamelessly link to them, though). So yes, by the time you read this, I’ve probably already gotten over In Field & Town (especially given that it’s not even released in the United States for another six months). But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t get four stars worth of enjoyment out of it before I did. Of course, I could be wrong, and In Field & Town could stay in rotation for months and even years. But even then – and I’ll admit, I expect that it’s unlikely – I still win.
“Ambient grunge” was once the finest encapsulation there was of Hayden’s music – loud, angry, but acoustic, and rather ‘foggy,’ for lack of a better term. But as grunge died, so to did the accuracy of this descriptor. So now, two albums removed from the wonderfully droning indie-rock spirit of Skyscraper National Park, Hayden is now best labelled as simply folk, following in a long sonic tradition of Towns Van Zandt (minus some, but not all of that country plunk), Nick Drake, and Neil Young (on Harvest, Harvest Moon, and, to some extent, Freedom). He’s nowhere near these titans, obviously, but they’re a good guide as to what you should expect. Well, that, a trumpet, and a vibraphone, whatever that is (apparently like an xylophone – there you go, we’ve learned something together).
The unusual flourishes here and there make me wonder if perhaps alt-folk isn’t an accurate classification. Unfortunately, I’m not convinced (regardless of whether it’s accurate) that it’s a legitimate one. So I’ll just point out, instead, that there are, in fact, times at which Hayden sounds like a low-rent Sufjan Stevens, condensing and concentrating Stevens’ lush multi-instrument, expansive orchestration into an appropriately budget setting – the horn section because a single trumpet, the careful synths become a solitary piano lick. Even the careful flourishes are budgetized, reduced to little more than harmonica, shakers, and – the most low-budget, but still the greatest, groove-building methods ever conceived – hand-clap percussion. To say that he rivals Sufjan – whom I don’t especially care for, but who is elsewhere salivated over, so I’ll defer, momentarily, to the wisdom of these others – would be a stretch, but his bedroom approximation of this orchestral-folk is affecting and wonderful nonetheless. In Field & Town is a tribute to low-cost ingenuity and the indie spirit – where hand-claps and a pedal steel guitar can have the same authority as thousands of dollars worth of professional arrangement and immaculate production.
Listening from album to album, beginning with Everything I Long For in 1995 and progressing chronologically through four more records, it becomes plainly apparent that Hayden has mellowed out somewhat. Unfortunately, the more Hayden mellows out, the more he drifts – occasionally quite dangerously – into the collegian singer-songwriter mode: softly strummed guitars, mumbled vocals in a shaky near-falsetto, harmonica, and vaguely tragic and/or insightful lyrics. Fortunately, he’s still pretty good in this juvenile devolution of the singer-songwriter mode. But he’s certainly not the Hayden I found so endearing ten years ago. And sure, he’s progressed personally (I assume), but in doing so, he’s regressed artistically. Skyscraper National Park was both a unique and a brilliant record: a kind of acoustelectric-folk-twang ‘n’ roll, from the fuzzy sweet nihilism of Dynamite Walls to the postmortem personal narrative of Bass Song. But still, even operating within the limited confines of the singer-songwriter, there’s still a lot of good – if not great – to be found. There’s nothing as immediately vibrant as the aforementioned Dynamite Walls or as stomach-churningly pressing as Skates or When This Is Over. But still, good. And he’s unafraid of experimenting – kinda, as I mentioned before – so long as the end-result is still invariably the work of a charmingly innocuous singer-songwriter. He does this, for the most part, with unusual rhythms (the title track) and curious instrumental flourishes (trumpet on The Van Song, vibraphone on More Than Alive). But by never straying too far from the trusty guitar-harmonica-piano blueprint, he rather limits himself.
He’s also abandoned completely, for what it’s worth, the baritone growl that made him “famous” – insofar as he ever was (see Bad As They Seem) – and which dominated his early output (though this process had already begun by the time of Skyscraper National Park and was more or less complete by the forgettable Elk-Lake Serenade). This isn’t strictly a bad thing (I was never a fan) – and, in fact, it may have been necessitated by the effects of such a violent growl on his vocal cords – but it is enough to limit him somewhat. This, of course, leads to another observation: that the more Hayden mellows, the more he falls back on his strained near-falsetto, and the more he sounds distinctly like Harvest-era Neil Young. Again, this is not unexpected given that a) they belong to the same musical tradition, of which Young was (is?) one of the best examples ever, and that b) it was Young whose interest in the youngster incited a major label bidding war in the first place, but one is left to wonder, occasionally, whether In Field & Town isn’t the logical by-product of ten-plus years of being described as “the next Neil Young” (that his live take on Young’s Tell Me Why is so startlingly brilliant – in spite of its predictability – is another, somewhat related, story). Regrettably, however, in reinforcing this caricature of his work, he chose to emulate only one aspect of Young’s musical body, rather than the totality of Young’s musical spirit – an important distinction. In other words, Hayden spends significant chunks of In Field & Town doing his best to mimic – sans honky-tonk, and maybe with a bit more pep, but the point remains – Harvest Neil Young.
The result is a rather good album (as I’ve already pointed out), and a remarkable forgery of Young’s folk years, tweaked for relevance in the 2000s. The problem with this, however, is two-fold: 1) Neil Young is still active as an artist, and producing some of the folksiest albums of his career in the 2000s, and 2) I’m not convinced that Neil’s folk years, in any case, needed to be tweaked for relevance in the aughts. Because, well, they were pretty much perfect, regardless of the generational lines across which they cut. What we’re left with, consequently, is a collection of songs that’s pretty good, but pretty much meaningless outside of a (very) limited context. A much wiser decision on Hayden’s part would have been to appreciate that the brilliance of Neil Young can’t be distilled to one of his phases (not even his – and this is arguable – best phase), but is rather born out of his I-Want-It-All spirit, a spirit that compelled him to explore almost every creative avenue that he possibly could.
But, on the plus side, Hayden’s not quite so morose as those other folk singer-songwriters. In fact – considering the chronic melancholy of his peers – he’s actually rather upbeat. Given that folk songwriters are not a well-adjusted lot, this isn’t saying much – and, because this observation is essentially based on reaction to an album filled with deceptively sunny, bouncing rhythms that are more or less just a counterpoint for rather sad lyrics, maybe I’m just fooling myself. But, if it actually means anything, one of the most affecting moments of In Field & Town is also the peppiest, musically speaking (Lonely Security Guard).
The author would also like to posit another, considerably less convincing theory: that the quality of Hayden’s output can be charted as a kind of wonky parabola, based on his levels of post-adolescent rage. This sounds patently ridiculous – but it is, so I wouldn’t worry about it. For the sake of brevity, I’ll say that Everything I Long For is very angry, and very good. The Closer I Get is rather pleasant, presumably because it’s a product of the most successful period of his career. It’s… well, it’s not great[1]. Skyscraper National Park sounds fairly upbeat, but is actually rather morose and mildly angry – owing, perhaps to the fact that it came at perhaps the worst point of his career (a first return to recording after being unceremoniously dumped by Geffen). It is, without a doubt, the finest moment of Desser’s career, and makes a compelling case as one of the best albums of the 2000s. Since then, Hayden has released two records, happy with his place in the musical canon. These albums (In Field & Town included) reflect, for all the continued singer-songwriter tragedy, a pretty upbeat sentiment and are – if you’re following my line of thought – merely OK-to-pretty-good. Thus, we’re left with something resembling a graph that shows speed vs. gas-mileage: the angrier Hayden is, the better he is. But only to a certain point. He’s like the Hulk, except he becomes green only when he’s, you know, just kinda irked. Like, say, when he stubs his toe.
But I digress. In Field & Town opens with the title track, a pleasant, almost mechanical little shuffle, buoyed by a simple 4/4 rhythm and the unusual inhale-exhale of what sounds suspiciously like either an accordion or a harmonium (though neither instrument is credited in the liner notes), and tastefully underpinning Hayden’s amateur crooning. More Than Alive is the requisite piano ballad, and is strikingly beautiful: framed by a four-note piano phrase, it builds quickly into a gorgeous, sweeping lullaby. Hayden’s whisper-quiet mumbles are ideal here, reassuring and yet heart-wrenching, complementing magnificently the tasteful bells, vibraphone, trumpet, and music box. If any kind of artistic growth can be extrapolated from In Field & Town, it’s to be found here, in one of the most subtly pressing songs Hayden has ever recorded.
The Van Song, meanwhile, is perfectly agreeable, but perfectly disposable; based around an almost folk by-way-of ragtime piano lick, it suffers from the centrality of Hayden’s voice and the way it grasps, shakily at melody. It’s almost redeemed, however, by wonderful trumpet fills (the album has many) which act as a peppy, musical counterpoint to Hayden’s strained vocals. Damn This Feeling is a less-effective echo of More Than Alive, its harmonica solo distinctly recalling Neil Young. But the shades of Harvest are even more apparent on Did I Wake Up Beside You?, whose slapdash organ, guitar – a haphazard mix of acoustic and electric – and staggering verse rhythm distinctly recall that album’s Words (Between The Lines of Age).
First single Where and When is a middle-of-the-road folk composition, buoyed by shakers, hand-claps and (again) trumpet, and notable for its self-conscious avoidance of the tempting sing-along refrain. Barely Friends echoes Harvest once more – complete with another, more compelling harmonica interlude – but it does so with a grace that makes it fairly memorable nonetheless. Short of More than Alive, however, Lonely Security Guard may well be In Field & Town’s highlight, a peppy and ostensibly childish sing-along – heavy on the piano, with a subtle hint of pedal steel and shakers – about an origami-crafting security guard who “with his hands and an old receipt / Makes a swan so real it breathes.” It’s a beautiful character sketch, sweet (it’s difficult not to smile as Hayden sings “He’ll make a cricket / From a parking ticket,” carefully enunciating and consciously smirking at the silly rhyme) yet quite poignant (“He relies on the people’s good / A big mistake in this neighbourhood”).
In Field & Town does raise an interesting question: is the singer-songwriter worn out as a musical institution? I can’t answer that. I can say, however, that while Hayden doesn’t do anything to shift the genre’s paradigm (one could argue that he never has, and I’d agree, short of Skyscraper National Park’s brief glimpses of the ambrosial), he sure does work comfortably within it.
As far as four star albums go (and considering we're limited by Epinions strict scale), In Field & Town isn't superb. In fact, there are records which I've given three stars that I feel are better. There are records that I will give three stars to in the future that (I'm sure) I will feel are better. Reading back, I can see that my review reflects this ambivalence fairly clearly. But for now, it is what it is. Meaning that In Field & Town isn’t a transcendent record, and it may not stay with you for the rest of the year, or even the month. But it’s still a good one. And - maybe because I'm a long time fan, or because I wish to illustrate that good guys don't always finish last - I'm willing to, like a teacher to his star pupil, give Hayden the benefit of the doubt.
But this is the last time. I swear.
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[1] – I actually took the opportunity to listen to The Closer I Get last night, for the first time in a few years. I was actually taken somewhat aback, because it sounds considerably angrier (and considerably better) than I ever remembered it. Conveniently though, this doesn’t actually discredit my theory.
Related Reviews:
Hayden - Everything I Long For
Hayden - Skyscraper National Park
Neil Young - Harvest
Neil Young - Tonight's The Night
Recommended:
Yes
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headlessparrot
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Member: Bryan Jansen
Location: Ontario, Canada
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