Former Hefner main man Darren Hayman serves up another helping of indie pop from his latest album with The Secondary Modern, 'Essex Arms', this time with the assistance of Emma-Lee Moss (aka Emmy the Great).
Everything about this is markedly English, but in a way that harks back to a golden age of Englishness. From the name of his backing band, The Secondary Modern, to the crocheted picture that makes the cover art, Hayman's music is entrenched in the vintage England that gave us Billy Bunter, The Beano and Hovis, a time of stay-at-home mums and home-baking and fish suppers wrapped in newspaper. While these artefacts of the past are preserved in museum and on scratchy old films, this image of life as it was is only part of the picture. Hayman does acknowledge this, and the starlings and baby deer exist in the same frame as pylons and barbed-wire fences. Somehow, it's just not enough.
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The trouble is, it's delivered in a way that's just too nicey-nicey and comes across as being contrived and twee, and the kitchen-sink contemplations of 'Until We Got Bored' has a distinctly sepiatone feel, referencing cycling, willow trees and pylons (again). The sparse, medieval folk of 'Essex Arms' provides an interesting contrast, but when Hayman moves away from overtly 'English' indie, as on the cod reggae salsa of 'Beach Head' it simply doesn't work, again not least of all because it sounds self-conscious and contrived.
A thumbs down, I'm afraid.
Darren Hayman on Myspace
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