Hefner - Darren Hayman - The singer-songwriter path to indie-pop

Who said that exploring one's inner self and expressing the feelings that come with it requires music marked by subdued tones and a slouching melodic pace? Who said you have to sing about frivolous subjects when you have a fresh, bright sound and instantly catchy melodies at your disposal? Not many artists or bands have tried to dismantle these clichés, seeking a balance between introspective lyrics and carefree music, and not everyone who's tried has succeeded. The Smiths are almost unanimously considered the ones who pulled off this mission better than anyone else, but if we narrow the field to the last fifteen years, we can't avoid at least mentioning the work of Darren Hayman, a forty-something born in Essex, perennially nerdy-looking and a rather prolific author (nine albums in thirteen years). His highly recognizable melodic style and the disenchanted way he has always described the urges, joys and pains inherent to every man's emotional life form the foundation that has allowed this balance to hold throughout the different phases of his career, but we shouldn't overlook a sonic exploration that has led Hayman to range across folk, pure pop and electronics, often lingering on the borders between these three territories and almost always managing to find an effective setting for his compositional ideas.

His pronounced genuineness, his ability to make the attentive listener understand that behind his music there was no desire to exploit pretentious artistic productions or language that was polished for its own sake, have always earned him an instinctive sympathy. One could point to a limitation in his scarce ability to break away from an established compositional pattern, which involves a slow start and a crescendo of sonic and emotional intensity accompanied harmoniously by increasing melodic immediacy, but it's also fair that every artist should have certainties to lean on, and besides, Hayman has been skilled at varying the elements surrounding this basic skeleton, so as never to lose his propulsive drive.

The first half of Hayman's career unfolded within Hefner, where he was the undisputed leader and almost sole author of music and lyrics. It's with this band that Hayman achieved his greatest recognition, but afterwards too, first with the brief electro-pop interlude of the project The French and then with a still-active solo career, there has been no shortage of acclaim and expressions of esteem for an artist who has never truly achieved commercial success but is still capable, thirteen years on from his first record, of delivering songs full of substance and personality.

Darren Hayman begins his career with songs on which he plays all the instruments himself, while his old schoolmate Antony Harding sings backing vocals. At a certain point Harding settles permanently behind the drums, and the two are joined by bassist John Morrison. The trio releases the single “A Better Friend” – which will later end up on their debut album – sparking the interest of Too Pure, who offer Hayman a record deal, which he extends to his two bandmates. It's 1997, and a year later comes their first album, titled Breaking God’s Heart.

There are cases where bands move away from the style of their debut to chart new paths; other times, however, the debut defines the boundaries within which at least part of the subsequent artistic journey will unfold. Breaking God’s Heart belongs to this second category, since it contains elements the band will struggle to move away from, both in terms of sound and, above all, songwriting. From the first point of view, everything rests on a basic lo-fi imprint and on the alternation between acoustic guitars, which take center stage most of the time, and electric guitars, which come in sometimes to give the acoustic sound body and depth, sometimes to steal the whole show. There's no shortage of further enrichment through the use of keyboards, and vocally too Hayman sometimes makes use of backing vocals, even if for the vast majority of the time it's only his voice singing. His ostentatiously British cadence, his oblique timbre and the great emotion present in every single note make Hayman's voice extremely recognizable right from the start. The combination of these elements produces a result of great vitality and expressive force, amplified by the variety between one song and the next in the sense described above.

The songwriting is built on melodies that are neither too immediate nor too hard to absorb. Often the compositional pattern, as mentioned, involves a start with the voice giving the impression of working on little more than a sketch rather than a finished song, followed by a development in which that initial sketch is completed, revealing the real melody only in the chorus. In these cases the sound pairs perfectly with the writing, with a few delicate touches of acoustic guitar, bringing in the other elements as the melody becomes clearer. It's a pattern Hayman still often uses today, and while his failure to break away from it could be seen as a limitation, there's no denying its great effectiveness in giving listeners songs whose development is always engaging. Also because, of the album's ten tracks, more than one strays from this structure, presenting itself as a more classic pop song (“Love Will Destroy Us In The End”, “God Is On My Side”), or staying ethereal and delicate (“Tactile”), or else unleashing adrenaline and electricity from the very start (“Eloping”).

Another important aspect of Hefner's catalogue right from the start is the lyrics, witty, thought-provoking and endowed with great evocative power, achieved without using any kind of poetic imagery, but purely through extreme realism in describing the reality of things, amplified by Hayman's care for meter and for the use of words whose very sound is able to tease the listener's ear.

This latter quality is well exemplified by the brilliant alliteration in the chorus of “The Sad Witch” (“She promised me three wishes, and all I wish is she should remain here”), while the best example of his ability to depict truly real situations and feelings is the chorus of “Another Better Friend”, a reworking of the single that landed the band their record deal (“It’s not love, it just smells like it, the scent of summer is so exciting. No matter how you brush your teeth, I can still smell the nicotine. And there’s no face I’d rather kiss than, your sweet face, oh when it’s smiling. I loved you until you were bedded, and our parents still talk of a wedding. Those bruises don’t betray any violence on my part, You’ve taken my possessions, we’re both dressed up like tarts, but it’s miserable and sluttish to be acting like I do in front of you”).

It's immediately clear that Hayman has no fear of laying bare the whirlwind of feelings that follow the end of an important relationship, and the fact that it's easy to identify with these lines, as with many others, doesn't stem from the kind of blandness that too often emerges when an artist is determined to speak to everyone, but precisely from the great realism of the images the author practically paints with his own words.

Another song that deserves at least a mention is “A Hymn For The Postal Service”, partly because it's rather striking to hear, now in the internet age, someone praying every morning for the postman to deliver a long-awaited letter, and partly because this is the first in a series of hymns that Hayman will go on to dedicate to the most improbable things, always as a way of expressing his varied relationship with matters of the heart.

Breaking God’s Heart, in short, has all the hallmarks of an excellent debut: it's consistently engaging to listen to, with no dips in intensity or quality, and already shows clear signs of the band's maturity and personality. In a year like 1998, generally regarded as the twilight of britpop, Hefner arrived on the scene with music whose Britishness and pop sensibility were only part of a much broader, more personal style.

Just a year passes, and Hefner are already ready with their second album, titled The Fidelity Wars. On this record multi-instrumentalist Jack Hayter begins to lend his contribution, credited here simply in the thank-yous for his playing, and soon to officially become the band's fourth member. The album can be placed on the same qualitative level as the debut, but not because it's a copy of it: indeed, compared to Breaking God’s Heart, the songs show a greater sense of completeness, thanks to a more carefully defined sound and melodies, which retain a high level of inspiration and personality. There's a greater variety of approaches: what emerges is not just the more melancholy side of Hayman's personality, but also a bolder, more self-assured attitude. This impression is then confirmed in the lyrics, especially in the first of the album's two hymns, namely “The Hymn For The Cigarettes”. Here Hayman sings: “She smoked in my bed cause she thought it would annoy me, but I love to see the girls smoke in my bed”, evidently because if they ended up in that bed there was at least one other reason that came before the urge to smoke... An injection of self-confidence that the author could barely muster just a year earlier, and which here comes across as healthy and convincing, helped also by the aforementioned ability of sound and melody to evoke positive vibrations.

Even though the album opens with this kind of feeling, as it goes on an equally important role is taken by the already familiar sense of melancholy over a love that has ended. In these cases, there's much more resemblance to past songs, although even here there's no shortage of more defined sound and melodic completeness, and there's also a greater robustness to the vocal timbre at moments of peak intensity, lending further force to the messages Hayman delivers. Here too the perfect example is in the other hymn, namely “The Hymn For The Alcohol”, in which the author recounts meeting the woman who left him for someone else, six months later. Amid the inevitable memories of good times and the recriminations over things she wouldn't accept before but now seems to enjoy with her new partner, Hayman at a certain point raises his voice to repeatedly shout out a line that's banal but hugely effective: “And if you know what’s true, you know I love you”.

What really convinces here, on the whole, is this newly acquired ability to seamlessly juxtapose such different moods, offering far broader vocal, instrumental and compositional solutions while never losing a strong overall coherence. Compared to the previous record, however, The Fidelity Wars lacks that sense of challenging conventional pop which came from the lo-fi imprint of the earlier songwriting: obviously this can only be a side effect of the choice to better define the sounds and melodies, a choice that can easily be accepted given the results it has produced. So there's every reason to be fully satisfied with the way Hefner and Darren Hayman have chosen to pursue this particular journey.

The next release, dated 2000, is Boxing Hefner, a collection of b-sides and rarities, with the addition of a couple of unreleased tracks and a cover of Jonathan Richman's "To Hide A Little Thought". The record, which officially credits Jack Hayter as a full member of the line-up, has the potential to spark interest even among those who have already collected every single: in fact, most of the songs here appear in versions different from their original incarnations as b-sides. The decision to put out a record like this stems from the desire to make as many people as possible aware that the band didn't just have two albums to its name, but also a huge number of singles and EPs, while the fact that many songs were re-recorded probably serves two purposes: on one hand, to show where the band stands at this particular juncture, moving from a three-piece to a four-piece line-up, and on the other, to avoid devaluing fans' collections, since buying the compilation still doesn't give you the chance to own the tracks exactly as they appeared on those now-impossible-to-find singles. The verdict on this compilation is a positive one, because these songs have little or nothing to envy in the tracks that made it onto the two albums. Here too, among the best moments are two "hymns", namely "The Hymn For The Coffee" and "The Hymn For The Things We Didn't Do": both songs belong to Hayman's most melancholic and nostalgic vein, with the first particularly anguished and the second more disenchanted.

Also worth mentioning are the cheerful "Christian Girls" and "Hello Kitten", marked by a light, fresh sound and bright, brilliant melodies, the driving "Pull Yourself Together" and the dirty, adrenaline-fuelled "Mary Lee". As can be seen, Hefner developed every aspect of their style even in their most obscure tracks, and paradoxically this can act as a deterrent to buying the collection, since it doesn't really add anything new to what was already known from the first two albums.

Also in 2000, the band's third album arrives, titled We Love The City. The group pushes even further the changes introduced on The Fidelity Wars compared to Breaking God's Heart, and, at a moment when britpop is well and truly dead and buried, delivers its work closest to the canons of the scene that had dominated Britain only a few years earlier. The classic songwriting template built on parallel crescendos of melodic clarity and sonic intensity is still present in several tracks, but by now the moments built on blurry melodies and careless arrangements feel like a distant memory. The accessibility of the songwriting, in fact, is virtually immediate, and the sound is always clean, often built on layers not just of guitars but also of horns and particularly soft additions to the rhythm section. All the rough edges have now been smoothed out, and the record comes across as well-rounded, very easy to listen to and full of positive vibrations.

The lyrics follow the same good-mood trail set by the title and the music: sure, there are still some traces of melancholy left (particularly effective, in this sense, is the ending of the single "The Greedy Ugly People", where the line "Love won't stop no wars, won't stop no cancer, it stops my heart" repeats), but the difficult moments are now viewed with more detachment than negativity, and positive situations are far more abundant than in the past. Speaking of lyrics, it's worth mentioning the bold political digression of "The Day That Thatcher Dies", in which, as the title already suggests, the band openly wishes for the death of the former Iron Lady, at which point, "even though we know it's not right, we will dance and sing all night". Words set to one of the band's most immediate melodies and a sound that's cheerier than ever, and which could certainly have landed Hayman and co. in some serious legal trouble: who knows whether, on that front, nothing ever came of it because the song never even reached the ears of Mrs. Thatcher or her party, or whether they simply chose to let it slide.

The record, as a whole, is still of excellent quality: even though the features examined above move it away from any notion of musical independence, there's never the impression that this newfound immediacy comes from dumbing things down or from a desire to please at all costs. On the contrary, these songs are a very effective representation of pop's nobler side, the kind that has the potential to win over the masses purely through compositional inspiration and the genuine aesthetic beauty of the sound. And if, in this case as in a thousand others, that mass appeal never materialized, it's certainly not the record's fault, but simply yet another demonstration that in music there is too often a mismatch between communicative potential and actual results.

Hefner kept up their one-album-a-year pace, and in 2001 came Dead Media, their last full-length effort. The record marks the sharpest turning point in the band's entire artistic trajectory, as it signals the start of the brief period in which Darren Hayman became infatuated with electro-pop. The sound, then, is completely different from everything Hefner had offered up to that point: guitar, bass and drums don't disappear entirely, but are relegated to an extremely marginal role, while synthesizers take over the spotlight, used in great abundance, as evidenced by the long list of various brands and models credited in the booklet. The record as a whole is long and quite heterogeneous, giving the impression that Hayman behaved like a kid who's discovered a new toy and wants to try out every possible way of having fun with it. We find, then, a great deal of variety not only in what the synthesizers produce, but also in melodic style and in the moods expressed by the songs. There are moments where the sound is dirty, saturated and powerful, alongside others built on a certain delicacy; instantly catchy melodies sit side by side with far more elusive ones; the emotional core of the record is marked by constant mood swings between melancholy and lightheartedness.

All these aspects result in a couple of rather significant problems: first of all, there's a noticeable lack of overall cohesion between the songs, which, unlike what had happened before on previous Hefner records, feel less like a unified collection with a logical thread and more like a series of experiments thrown together just to reach a number of tracks sufficient for album length, and this despite the fact that the digital element dominates the sound of every song; secondly, the sound construction itself is too shoddy, giving the impression of a band taking its first steps with this kind of gear, which, in this case, Hefner actually were. It's true that listening to the record, the choice seems like a deliberate one, and one is tempted to draw a parallel between the lo-fi imprint of Breaking God's Heart and that of Dead Media, but while in a rock context lo-fi always has a certain charm, especially when paired with quality melodies and lyrics, electro-pop still needs an organic, fluid sound, and here there's little trace of those qualities. The record isn't a write-off, though, because Hayman's melodic ideas are always interesting, and because some songs strike a good balance between his songwriting style and this new sonic guise, turning out genuinely enjoyable. But it's not for Dead Media that Hefner will be remembered, and even listening to the record now, nine years after its release, the feeling that it's an appendix the band could easily have done without only grows stronger.

2001 also saw Hefner's only Italian concert, on November 15th at Binario Zero in Milan. Fortunately, on this occasion the band didn't focus on the new material, but offered a setlist drawing almost evenly from all of their records, songs all performed superbly, both musically and vocally, the voice always steady and assured even when tackling tricky crescendos. Less than a month later, they would play in London what turned out to be their final concert. 2002 saw the release of an EP titled The Hefner Brain, featuring five songs, three of which continue in the vein of Dead Media, while two revive the band's old sound. That same year, the band broke up. According to the official website, the cause lies in the band's inability to hold on to a solid fanbase at a time when they were making their sound very different from what they had done before.

Before looking at everything Darren Hayman did after Hefner, it's worth mentioning the other member of the band who launched his own career. That's drummer Antony Harding, who performs solo simply as Ant. His musical style is extremely stripped-back and delicate, with a soft voice and acoustic guitar arpeggios of equally gentle tone, like a kid playing alone in his bedroom on a grey, overcast day.

Ant began releasing EPs as early as 1999, and naturally stepped up his output once Hefner broke up. His first album, titled A Long Way To Blow A Kiss, came out in 2002, but his biggest success came in 2006 with his second record, Footprints Through The Snow, especially in Italy, since the album was released by Bologna's Homesleep. Since then, Ant has kept putting out singles, EPs and splits on various local labels, and in June 2009, again for an Italian label, Black Kitten, came a single on which, for the first time since Hefner's split, Ant made music with Darren Hayman. Who knows whether this might be the prelude to a full Hefner reunion, although a year and a half has now passed since its release and there's still no word on that front. Given how limited the distribution of Ant's material has been, any judgement on his music here can only be based on what's been released in Italy, material in which the former drummer churns out melodic ideas that are certainly interesting, along with a good ability to convey the decidedly introspective feelings underpinning his songs, but which overall lacks the substance needed to make the listener want to put the CD back on. Listening to it can be pleasant for two or three spins, but then Ant does nothing to add a bit more variety to the voice-and-arpeggiated-guitar formula, and over time the whole thing ends up feeling a little too repetitive.

Hayman, meanwhile, kept nurturing his interest in electro-pop and formed, to that end, the project The French, together with the bassist from his now ex-band, John Morrison (who, around that time, also contributed to Ant's aforementioned debut album). The French only made one album before Hayman began the solo career he's still pursuing today. The record is titled Local Information and came out in 2003. Listening to it, and thinking back to Dead Media, the difference immediately becomes clear between a record with a deliberately vintage synthetic sound that's put together in a rather clumsy, un-organic way, as is the case with that last Hefner album, and one that shares the same basic traits but is of an entirely different quality, not just sonically, but also in terms of songwriting and the stylistic coherence of the tracks as a whole, as is the case with Local Information. Earlier it was said that in 2001 it felt as though Hayman was struggling to figure out how best to give shape to his passion for electro-pop: well, here our man takes a clear, well-defined path, based, unsurprisingly, on bittersweet, melancholic feelings.

From a songwriting standpoint, all ten tracks could be likened to Hefner's ballads, even though here the intensity crescendos typical of that side of the band's catalogue are missing. The melodies have the same tendency to feel more elusive in the verses and more immediate in the choruses, and the lyrics too deal with subjects similar to those of the past, ranging from portraits of lonely girls trying to make up for the lack of a love life by putting on a show of exuberance that's really just an act, to the complex dynamics of love, with all its doubts, fears and hopes. These shared traits across the various tracks help build the logical thread that had gone missing in the final Hefner records, and the greater skill in constructing the sound manages to keep the songs tied together without ever giving the impression of listening to the same thing over and over. The opener "Porn Shoes" is particularly successful, but the whole record is well crafted and shows that when Hayman has clear ideas in mind, he's still capable of making his two souls, the singer-songwriter and the indie-pop one, interact in a truly unique way.

With this project, Darren Hayman returned to Italy, specifically to Covo in Bologna in February 2004. That same year, however, he decided to set it aside in favour of a solo career that would, step by step, lead him to the context in which he has always been able to express himself at his very best.

The first record released under the author's own name arrives in 2006, titled Table For One, and made with an entirely new band aside from the ever-faithful John Morrison. Hayman keeps his usual melodic style, but wraps it in a sonic guise that's again different from both the recent and the more distant past. Electronics are practically set aside, save for a few fleeting moments, but compared to the more rock-leaning productions, here there's a desire to come across as fresh and immediate as possible. This attempt is pursued through arrangements with a broader scope than usual, featuring far more guitars and a wide variety in how they're played, along with the arrival of a number of instruments that had so far been absent, like the mandolin, or underused, like strings and certain keyboard sounds. The lyrics follow the disenchantment of the music, offering, in a rather soft way and without showing the emotional involvement of the past, the usual mix of portraits of very specific characters, the author's memories spanning adolescence and adulthood, and matters of the heart, here pushed somewhat into the background. Listening to this record is very enjoyable, but, for an overall judgement, one can't ignore the side effect of this change in sound, namely the failure to properly showcase the author's melodies, which, one gets the impression, would be far more effective if backed by the more stripped-back accompaniment that had always characterized his catalogue. Amid this more elaborately constructed sound, instead, they end up getting lost, so that the songs reach the listener on a more superficial level.

To promote this record, Hayman came to Italy for the third time in April 2006, once again at the Covo in Bologna. Since in this live configuration the band is made up of just four musicians in total, it's impossible to reproduce every nuance of the sound, and that turns out to be a good thing, precisely because the melodies manage to come through more clearly, making the songs far more engaging.

Hayman is now well launched into his solo career, and returns to his old prolific pace. By 2007, in fact, it's already time for a second album, the first released as Darren Hayman And The Secondary Modern, the name under which the artist still presents himself today. The album's title is the same as the band's name. The sound is still built from numerous elements: depending on the track, we find curious interplay between banjo and sax, or a straightforwardly electric sound, or violin lines that take centre stage, or else a particularly lively acoustic sound; there's no shortage of quieter moments either, and digital elements pop up every now and then.

The sheer number of instruments present would thus seem to suggest continuity with the arrangement structure of the previous work, but there's a notable difference in how the available material is used: everything, in fact, has a more measured character, so that the overall result comes across as decidedly more restrained. These new songs share an emotional spectrum not unlike the Hefner back catalogue, although the lyrics remain more detached and less passionate than in the Nineties: after all, that's the same path every human being's emotions take once they've got a few more years on their shoulders, and our man here is thirty-seven. The album is nonetheless well-crafted from every angle, and it's a pleasure, after a few years, to find a Darren Hayman who's expressing his potential so well.

2008 saw no solo release from Hayman, but that's not to say he was idle. He in fact started up a bluegrass-country project with three other musicians, namely Dave Watkins, Simon Trout and John Lee: the quartet put out an album titled simply with the members' respective surnames and played a string of shows.

Early 2009 brought the third solo album, the second with the Secondary Modern. Pram Town is described by its author as a folk work, recorded with an actual orchestra. The sound, as one might easily imagine, is especially full and rounded, but here too we find several traits carried over from the previous album: there's the same desire to put the broad instrumental set at hand to use with class and restraint, so as to showcase the melodies, always bright and inspired, to best effect. The lyrics, too, show more lightness and less passion. This is arguably the most captivating record of his solo career, thanks to the warmth and softness it manages to convey, through the refined caresses of strings and horns, the fine variety of tempos in the rhythm section, and the clean, unfussy guitars and vocals.

Darren Hayman's most recent release dates from 2010: the artist, not content with the already vast scope of his discography, announced Essex Arms as the second chapter of a trilogy, of which Pram Town, evidently, had been the opening part. There is, however, no sonic continuity with the previous work, because here he returns to a bare-bones approach not heard since the days of "The Fidelity Wars". In truth, the various banjos, mandolin, strings and horns haven't vanished, but this time they amount to little more than a faint backdrop, while the traditional acoustic guitar-bass-drums trio takes centre stage instead.

One shouldn't assume, though, that this is a wholesale return to the Nineties style: for one thing, because the mood of the songs is consistently calm, lacking the emotional surges that were the lifeblood of that period, and also because Hayman shows a distinct interest in classic folk songwriting, whose conventions these new songs follow almost to the letter. Still, this can't be called a mere exercise in stylistic nostalgia, because the author's melodic touch comes through unmistakably, and his vocal timbre and expressiveness also remain as singular as ever.

For the coming month of January 2011, Darren Hayman has announced that he will make available for free download one song for every day of the month, for 31 songs in total. This is the web page for the project.

2012 is a very prolific year for Hayman, who starts off with the 17 sketches of The Ship's Piano, played on a small upright piano similar to those once used on ships, continues with The Shit Piano (containing Casio-keyboard versions of the same pieces), moves through the whimsical concept record Lido (instrumental music dedicated to the English seaside leisure spots) and closes — this time in far more inspired and constructive fashion — with The Violence, a powerful and ambitious album centred on the persecution of witches during the English Civil War of the 17th century. The opening track, touching and wonderfully measured, which gives the whole record its title, perfectly sets the stage for the atmosphere of quiet, intimate drama that pervades all twenty tracks of the album: Hayman's skill in crafting lyrics is put at the service of a folk sound of classic refinement, where acoustic essentiality is effectively framed by elegant yet understated string and horn arrangements. Across the full length of the record, a degree of repetitiveness is inevitably felt, yet the unusual, female-centred Spoon River sketched out by Darren Hayman's pen is home to a series of genuinely beautiful and moving episodes, possessing a depth that's at once light-footed and wryly immediate, bringing to mind as much early Badly Drawn Boy as the inimitable touch of a Nick Drake or an Elvis Costello. Worth singling out among them: the unsettling calm of "How Long Have You Been Frightened For?", the oblique ballad of the hanged women "Elizabeth Clarke", the artless simplicity of "I Will Hida Away", the soft tenderness of "Henrietta Maria", and the bright, surprising Belle And Sebastian-like lightness with which the sad story of "Rebecca West" is told, the first of many innocent women to be tried for witchcraft. In truth, Hayman's work would deserve careful analysis not only from a musical standpoint but, above all, a historical and poetic one, given the admirable commitment the English musician has poured into this undertaking. What's certain, in any case, is that The Violence is Hayman's finest and most inspired work in many years, further proof of the shy, rhapsodic yet tireless genius of the former Hefner frontman.

Confirmation that Darren Hayman is enjoying a second musical youth comes with Chants For Socialists, which gives the English musician the perfect opportunity to reaffirm the authenticity of his urban-folk sound, with a set of bittersweet songs inspired by the writings of William Morris: writer and ideologue of the socialist movement in England. Darren Hayman is increasingly positioning himself somewhere between pop and songwriting, blending poetry and popular song with refined ballads that pair bitter lyrics with melodies full of optimism — songs with little interest in modernity but rich in communicative power. Chants For Socialists is the most inspired and cohesive album Hayman has recorded since Hefner split up, almost a cross between the old Billy Bragg and the recent historical excursion of King Creosote on "From Scotland With Love".

Life, suffering, freedom, work and death are the themes around which songs alternate between militant tones ("March Of The Workers", "No Master High Or Low"), at times lit up by the energy of the noblest kind of pop ("May Day 1984"), and more often heartfelt and subtly romantic ("The Day Is Coming", "All For The Cause"). Hayman turns in some of the most beautiful and intense songs of his career, tackling the most painful and delicate aspects of his political-musical narrative: the nostalgic, evocative waltz of "Down Among The Dead Men" and the raw, aching folk of "A Death Song" are as delicate and touching as only the best folk music can be, and show that behind Chants For Socialists lies a real attention to detail and lyrical context — songs that, for all their outward simplicity, are in fact rich with nuances and details worth examining closely.

After so many years in the business, in short, Hayman has probably given up trying to say anything new, but he hasn't lost his appetite for exploring musical solutions that still stay true to his world, allowing him to express his unmistakable personality. It's therefore reasonable to expect several more fine works from this talented artist.

contributions by Andrea Cornale ("The Violence") and Gianfranco Marmoro ("Chants For Socialists")

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