darren – Page 22

Hayman, Watkins, Trout and Lee

Posted on 6th May 200811th August 2018 by darren

Released 6th May 2008

Hayman, Watkins, Trout and Lee are a country, bluegrass band from East London. They don’t sing in American accents and their songs feature tube trains, Bethnal Green, sick days, flat lemonade and unmade beds. HWTL perform weary singalongs; fragile and flawed ballads that wipe a tear and force you to smile.

Darren Hayman (ex Hefner) formed the band with Dave Watkins, in 2005, as an antidote to their ‘career’ bands. The idea was that this would be a band with as little ego as possible, with everybody taking vocals, submitting material, leaving and arriving as they wished. The group is as much about playing around Darren’s kitchen table as it is playing on any stage.

In the spirit of Big Pink, the Basement Tapes and the first McCartney album, it was decided to record the album in two days at Darren’s house, with a bunch of battered microphones, a fresh pot of tea, and some fruit cake. The resulting recordings feature seven band originals (four written by Darren and two by David Tattersall) alongside covers of songs by Townes Van Zandt and The Mountain Goats and smattering of traditional tunes.In fact the original idea was even to avoid the notion of doing records. However when Dave Tattersall (The Wave Pictures) joined in 2007 with a whole repertoire of blues and country songs, as well as his own fantastic ballads, it became obvious that they had something worth preserving.

Hayman, Watkins, Trout and Lee let you peer though the cracks of their kitchen, and hit nearly all the right notes in the process. Let them give you a warm handshake.

Buy Hayman, Watkins, Trout and Lee on CD

Or buy the download from Bandcamp for £5

Bad Policewoman/Your Heart – single

Posted on 8th July 200711th August 2018 by darren

Recorded during sessions for the album Darren Hayman and the Secondary Modern. The two songs on this 7-inch do not appear on the album. The b-side features Terry Edwards on saxophone. Limited to 500 numbered copies.

Buy Bad Policewoman on 7-inch

Darren Hayman and the Secondary Modern

Posted on 1st January 20075th February 2016 by darren

Originally released 2007 on Track and Field.
Darren Hayman presents his second solo album and a new backing band. ‘Darren Hayman and the Secondary Modern’ was recorded between Summer and Winter 2006 and features his touring band from that period; Amos Memon (Fanfarlo, Tompaulin) on drums, Dave Watkins on banjo and Simon Trought (Tompaulin) on bass, percussion, mandolin, backing vocals and acting as recording engineer.
The record also features a whole host of special guests including Dave Sheppard (Ellis Island Sound), Galia Durant (Psapp), John Howard (reclusive 70’s songwriting genius), Wesley Gonzalez (Lets Wrestle), David Tattersall (The Wave Pictures), Mark Brend (Farina) Terry Edwards (Scapegoats, Tindersticks, Higsons), Pete Astor (Loft, Weather Prophets).
The idea for this album was to make some lively rock and roll. All of Darren’s recent releases have been intensive, home-recorded affairs; for this record, Darren decided to go to a recording studio and piece together an album quickly with little preparation. Some of the songs (Let’s Go Stealing, The Wrong Thing) were improvised quickly by Darren, with Amos playing along on drums and the rest of the song being written afterwards. On Apologise and Pupil Most Likely, Darren assembled a group of musicians who had not previously met or heard the songs and recorded them in 8 short hours.

None of this is to suggest that this album is slapdash. The lyrics as usual are precise, emotive, direct, heartbreaking and amusing all at the same time. The theme of suburban ennui and aspiration from his last two albums continue this time with a particular focus on schools and education inspired by Darren’s recent short career as an Art Teacher. Other songs focus on the perils of cheap engagement rings, the need for clearer language in love letters, and the Higgins versus Reardon snooker final of 1982. Also recorded during these sessions was the single, Bad Policewoman.

Darren Hayman and the Secondary Modern – Related Singles

Bad Policewoman

Bad Policewoman/Your Heart 7″ Vinyl

Buy Bad Policewoman on 7-inch

Maida Vale

Posted on 4th December 200611th August 2018 by darren

On the 23rd of August 2000, Hefner played a very special show from BBC’s Maida Vale studios to an invited audience for the John Peel show. This was the highlight of the relationship between the band and the greatly revered DJ, which had seen five Peel sessions and four live concerts broadcast on his Radio 1 show.

The concert on this CD features an 8 piece version of the band, including a brass section, pedal steels, ukuleles and violin alongside their own guitars bass and drums. It also features several contributions from Amelia Fletcher, (Talulah Gosh, Heavenly, Wedding Present, Marine Research). The songs have been newly remixed from the original master tapes, and the CD features photos from the night as well as sleeve notes from Darren Hayman.

The CD captures an exceptional performance of many songs rarely played live during Hefner’s short career.

Buy Maida Vale on CD

or buy download from Bandcamp for £4.99

Catfight

Posted on 6th August 200611th August 2018 by darren

Released August 2006

For such a short career, Hefner were incredibly prolific, but this release proves we only knew half the story. 43 unreleased songs are collected here on two CDs. The songs are sequenced in reverse order, starting with the final Hefner recording session and going right back to 1994 with Darren’s earliest songs, 3 years before Breaking God’s Heart. The CDs also come with extensive new sleeve notes from Darren himself and previously unseen photographs.

Buy Catfight on double CD

Or buy the download from Bandcamp for £7.99.

The Best of Hefner

Posted on 27th March 200611th August 2018 by darren

Originally released 27th March 2006 on Fortune and Glory.

A collection of singles, live favourites, b-sides and rarities, The Best of Hefner re-releases twenty of the band’s most-loved songs.

Review from http://drownedinsound.com/releases/7279/reviews/726346-
BY BEN MARWOOD

In an ideal musical world where the cream does actually rise to the top and Oasis only had two albums, I would not have to explain who Hefner were. You’d already know, because the indie-rock quartet would be on every Q list ever and on MTV2 at every opportunity; there would be no escape. But life isn’t fair kids, life’s a bitch and it hates you. Life will break your heart.

That was the point of Hefner, a band renowned for the songwriting of Darren Hayman, for whom lyrical heartbreak lied around every corner. Whilst the ‘cool’ bands wrote songs about the lack of intelligence in the NYPD, Hayman wrote about the Trojan War and the future death of Margaret Thatcher as well as the countless lost loves. The songs of Hefner, whether it was their ultra-lo-fi first recordings or the polished electronica which proved to be their curtain call, were so tactile that they almost reached out and touched you and so honest, so laced with frustration that on occasion it made Belle & Sebastian look bland. “Everytime you cry, it gives me little heart attacks”, sobs Hayman on ‘Good Fruit’ with an observation so tiny that most writers would never consider it for a lyric. Coupled with a no-nonsense attitude towards intimacy (“you should be lying on your back with a glow in your heart” comes the sleazy observation in ‘Pull Yourself Together’), this is what earmarked Hefner, for me at least, as something special.

The Best Of Hefner, then, is a cross-section of the six years that Hefner were properly active, featuring both ultra-rare songs, like ‘A Better Friend and the original version of ‘Christian Girls, and their ‘hits’ ‘I Took Her Love For Granted’, ‘Good Fruit’ et al. Unlike most Best Ofs, this is not just a tired singles compilation (although all singles are present and correct), the fan favourites are on here also from the masturbatory tale of b-side ‘Hello Kitten’ to the Conservative-baiting playground singalong that is ‘The Day That Thatcher Dies’. True to the entire back catalogue, even two tracks from less popular final album Dead Media (‘When Angels Play Their Drum Machines’ and ‘Home’) are included, and when their electronica sounds are put back to back with the guitar-based portion of the back catalogue new life is breathed into them – they work much better intermingled here than they ever did mixing with their own kind.

If there is one criticism that could be made, it is that with a slew of excellent b-sides behind them only ‘Hello Kitten’ made the final cut, but it should go without saying that fans of Hefner will want to own this CD for the first few rare tracks, if not just to complete the collection. For anyone who missed out and is intrigued then I implore you: if you’ve ever been heartbroken, if you’ve ever looked at the coquette from down the road and thought “well, maybe..”, if you like your music honest, slightly filthy and faintly twee then do yourself a favour, make this top of your list.

Hefnet

Hefnet

Author: darren