Hayden – Skyscraper National Park
Hayden’s voice is as light as an angel’s kiss, and his songs creep up on you slowly, cozily unfolding like the half-remembered pieces of a waking dream. His blissed-out, lo-fi acoustica has won him fans from Steve Buscemi, who hired him to help score his directorial debut Trees Lounge, to Neil Young, who once signed the Canadian troubadour to his own Vapor label.
However, pressure from the majors saw Hayden shun the limelight for a self-imposed exile, from which he now returns with this intimate-sounding, utterly gorgeous and home-recorded slice of heaven. His high yearning voice, equal parts J. Mascis and Ray Davies, winds its sweet sad way along, and each song manages to feel as warm as your lover’s side of the bed on a cold winter’s night.
Whether it’s the junk shop salvo of Salvation Army horns that lead the soothing “Lullaby” or the Flaming Lips-do-Belle & Sebastian jauntiness of “All In One Move”, this album is a real charmer. But it’s clear from the Kinks-sounding skiffle of “Carried Away”, slackerdom’s take on Paul Simon’s “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover”, that an alternative career in relationship counseling may not be such a good idea: “Maybe you could tell him/That since the day you met him/You’ve been liking him less and less,” he suggests. Ouch.