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One byproduct of the Information Age is that we're constantly forced to look at the big picture. That's why we're inundated with talking heads flickering across our TV screens 24/7 explaining how this or that current event relates to our society as a whole; that's why our newspapers and magazines now confront us with ostensibly meaningful "news analysis." It's as if we've forgotten that pithy phrase that Hayden reminds us of on the title track to his latest record, The Closer I Get (Outpost): "The truth is in the details." The Toronto singer-songwriter imparts this message regularly, whether he's focusing on the feelings of the two boys who perished in the back seat of the car their mother drove into a South Carolina lake, or the romantic night spent alone with his girlfriend, or a trip to the barber--all microscopic subjects he's addressed on his two full-lengths and the EP that arrived between them. "There are tons of people who write about the big things in life," Hayden says from a tour stop in Minneapolis. "So I write about the small things." Unfortunately for the soft-spoken 27-year-old, his extraordinary storytelling and songwriting ability made him a "big thing" in the music industry shortly after he self-released his stark 1995 debut, Everything I Long For. Record labels strived to outbid each other in an effort to sign the solo musician and distribute his album in the infinitely more lucrative American market. Though this seems desirable, the million-dollar antes raised eyebrows and expectations and eventually sparked debate within the music community about whether Hayden deserved such star treatment. "I thought it would be good to have the music available all around North America and the world," he recalls. "When I was working on Everything I Long For, writing songs when I got home from work and recording them in my parents' basement late at night, I thought that I would print up a thousand copies and that the songs would mostly be heard by people I knew. It was pretty crazy what ended up happening." The attention backfired, and Hayden's debut earned him little more than a cult following and lower-rung billing on parts of the '96 H.O.R.D.E. tour. He retreated to the spiffy Toronto apartment he secured with the windfall from his signing with the Geffen-funded Outpost and composed more material, some of which saw light on the discreet, Canada-only Moving Careful EP. Asked to pen the title song for Steve Buscemi's directorial debut Trees Lounge, Hayden tossed off a gem about a barstool loser that matched the indie film's dark vibe; Buscemi liked it so much that he and Hayden co-directed an accompanying music video. With his luck improving and a fresh batch of songs under his arm, Hayden trekked from upstate New York to Seattle to Toronto to Los Angeles, recording with top-notch producers such as longtime Neil Young cohort John Hanlon, frequent R.E.M. collaborator (and Outpost co-owner) Scott Litt and indie-rock's omnipresent knob-twiddler Steve Fisk. This peripatetic approach resulted in part because of the lingering idea that Hayden had something to prove; his songs could be pretty or catchy or wonderfully detailed, but where would this place him in the big picture? "During the recording and writing of [The Closer I Get], I let people's expectations and all the people who were around me get in the way a little bit," he says. "But I was able to rerecord the songs I'd done when I was feeling the pressure, or not use songs that I wrote when I was feeling that way. I was able to forget about what was going on, and thankfully, I don't think that any of that pressure shows up on the record." If anything, the songs on The Closer I Get sound as if they came from a more relaxed young man. Reviews of his first full-length noted that Hayden seemed to be singing in a quiet quaver so as not to disturb his sleeping parents, but on the follow-up, he exudes confidence on bittersweet ballad, mid-tempo shuffle and rootsy rave-up alike. Tracks with full-band arrangements in particular hint that Hayden may live up to the hype, as the bounding guitar rocker "The Hazards of Sitting Beneath Palm Trees," the hook-filled "Better Off Inside" and the cinematic "Instrumental with Mellotron" emerge as highlights. He's also adept at striding through the pastoral "Two Doors"--which features a bouncy banjo riff in the chorus--and strumming out a slice-of-life tale about teaching his girlfriend to play guitar in "Between Us to Hold." The only limitation he's yet to conquer is his voice, an agreeable alto that too often saunters into oppressively somber regions--in short, a classic indie-rock mope. But as Hayden's latest album title suggests, he's approaching the type of comfort zone that the record industry and the public never afforded him. "Because of the way I was introduced to a lot of people in the public, as this person who went through a bidding war and who was supposedly the next whoever, a lot of people's expectations were pretty large," he says. "It's that whole thing of when you go to see a movie that everyone's talking about, and then you think it's just good, you'll probably say you didn't like it." Hayden catches himself looking at the big picture. "Whatever," he says. "I'm not gonna sit here and complain." |
