Paul Hayden Desser – aka Hayden – is not a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry from the High Middle Ages, but he is a troubadour. Regardless of our musical tastes, we all have room for a troubadour in our lives – a moody, guitar-carrying, often bearded man occupied by his own thoughts and in love with the rain. Thirty years ago, Hayden’s debut album Everything I Long For caused much record label excitement, and fellow Canadian Neil Young is said to have made an offer. His latest and ninth album Are We Good features contributions from Feist and Matt Berninger and Aaron Dessner from The National.
But it’s his fourth album Elk-Lake Serenade that we return to here – all 19 tracks (including bonus tracks). Opener ‘Wide Eyes’ is certainly a serenade for listening to on a lake if one can afford the means to create such specific conditions. It would be lazy but accurate to say that Hayden’s croon isn’t all that different to Berninger’s. On ‘Home By Saturday’, Hayden sounds as though he’s squeezing in a recording session at the end of a 50-hour-week. The bright, brief ‘Woody’ could be the end credit music for a show like My Name is Earl. ‘This Summer’ may well have been recorded on the front porch as summer turned into autumn.
Drums! Double-tracked vocals! Everyone push the chairs to the side of the room and dance to ‘Hollywood Ending’, which could have been a collab between Folk Implosion and Elliot Smith with additional celebratory trumpet. On ‘Robbed Blind’, Hayden can’t help coming across as chirpy over G and D chords despite the lyrics “A month ago we were doing alright / Now I’m just left here / Robbed blind.” It’s taken this long to compare Hayden to Nick Drake, but it must be done. The cello, the violin, the bouncy picking pattern, the soft vocals and beautiful melody mean that ‘Killbear’ should be a classic. It will be if enough people say it is.
The very brief ‘Through The Rads’ precedes the jazz noir of ‘Starting Over’, which resembles Ed Harcourt, or rather Ed Harcourt resembles Hayden. ‘Don’t Get Down’ could be a cut from After The Gold Rush, and the harmonies on ‘Roll Down That Wave’ reminded me of Damien Rice’s O. It’s a bit frustrating that the track doesn’t reach the two-minute mark, as it could have been a sprawling ode to ‘the one’. The squelchy electronics of ‘My Wife’ are unexpected to say the least, and as weird as anything on Beck’s Midnite Vultures. There’s more Nick Drake-like twanging on ‘1939’, which is best played while observing a thundercloud gallop into the foreground.
The title track ‘Elk-Lake Serenade’ is a one-minute-long piano interlude that sounds like Randy Newman having a moment. ‘Looking Back To Me’ is a maudlin, two-chord strum that starts with the lines: “I was driving North / By myself feeling sad of course.” Troubadours don’t always have to take themselves seriously. ‘The Show’ invites the rest of the band and puts on a show. Troubadours don’t always like to be by themselves feeling sad. ‘Girls Are Gross’ is, in Hayden’s own words, “kind of a kid’s song”, and, in my words, is cheeky Bob Dylan circa 1964. The acoustic stomper ‘In A Minute’ includes the borrowable lines “our love’s got no limits” and “our love’s not intermittent” (OK, maybe not the second one, unless you’re a microwave married to a microwave). ‘Hoping It Won’t Go Wrong’ winds the album to a close like a steam train easing towards the station.
After a long absence a few years ago, friends apparently referred to Hayden’s return as ‘The Hayden’s Not Dead Tour’. Thankfully, he’s about to go on tour to promote Elk-Lake Serenade, and thankfully, he’ll be very much alive while he’s doing it. And then, hopefully, album number ten.
Elk-Lake Serenade (20th anniversary edition) is out now on Hardwood Records /Outside Music
