In contemporary art, the degree of an artist’s ability to create something wholly and innovatively original can be measured with virtual perfection by considering, at once, both the amount of warranted praise the artist collects from his or her well-informed peers and the amount of un-warranted disregard he or she receives from the generally uneducated public. For every Michelangelo, Hemmingway, and Dylan who is celebrated ceaselessly in their lifetime and deemed a laureate and ambassador of their craft by colleagues and fans alike, there is a Van Gogh, Thoreau, and Drake whose subtle lives receive but hushed compliments from dear friends, and whose tragic deaths long forerun the ultimate endorsement of their eventual bandwagon-admirers.
Still, somewhere in the faceless mass, the hip-fastened I-Pod of a hip and entirely indie-r-than-thou music fanatic plays Canadian singer-songwriter Hayden’s 1995 debut release Everything I Long For in its stark and pioneering entirety, proving at long last that ambitious and unknown artists can still root themselves in the fertile and inhabitable grounds somewhere between the outskirts of the grim, overstated melodrama associated with posthumous acknowledgment and the border of a state defined by the understated, sad truth that the great majority of music fans refuse to think with even the dream of faint or formless independence. Ok, anyway…
What first strikes you about this album is its creator’s range in both sentiment and voice. Songs like I’m to Blame and You Were Loved find Hayden cooing post-whisper laments of regret, whereas Skates and Driveway find Hayden screaming about the uncertainty and finality of death. While the former tracks exhibit him as a romantic, it is the latter that demonstrate his best quality. As an apparently seasoned student of Tom Waits’ reverential bark-vs.-bite lyric-layering formula, Hayden manages to spread his ranging raging vocals calmly over a series of tenderly harmonized melodies without eclipsing this light musical accompaniment with what could easily become strident, callous, throat-cancer cruelty.
In addition to his breadth-covering vocals, Hayden is a purebred storyteller, the variety that sidesteps the staleness of relying on an established tale in favor of penetrating a sketch seemingly void of plot and miraculously unearthing the dormant, muted seeds of emotion and action that will eventually bloom into plotted blatancy well after his four minute dedication to veiled purpose and clandestine beauty has concluded with a barely audible sigh and the fading reverb of his last chord-brushed, pick-less sweep. His meticulously chosen lyrics make everything from love and lies to loss and murder beautifully and immediately familiar in an amiable art-house-turned-the-house-you-grew-up-in style. In his haunting vignettes, lovers abscond from the rain in telephone booths, store clerks sympathize with the last wishes of widowers, and children faithfully describe their murder at the hands of a parent they’ve never learned to mistrust.
The stunning 14 track LP drifts by with unprecedented EP-rapidity, seemingly improving its substance while abridging it with each refining spin that reveals new and endless interpretable possibilities and nuisances to sense. After listening to Everything I Long For, you’re left feeling sparred from the sensation of un-chaperoned finality that accompanies a posthumous release and each track reminds you that some talent is meant to be appreciated in its holder’s lifetime.
So, should Everything I Long For sit as an equal beside A Starry Night, Walden, or Pink Moon? Maybe not. Should it at least be included on a few more I-Pod playlists? Definitely. |