They lasted six years, released four albums that were highly praised – by the handful of people who heard them – and disbanded anticlimactically, with no official announcement and the singer simply commenting in an interview, in passing, that they were not planning to perform any more. The Hefner band emerged in the midst of the hangover from the britpopwith a leader, Darren Hayman (53 years old, Brentwood, Essex, United Kingdom), more like a nerd that the headliner of any festival, and a music of complex pedigree to establish, between the taste for melody and delicate composition, noisy accesses typical of American alternative rock and lyrics of a torn confessional style with one foot in the folkThey sounded like many bands (Violent Femmes, Belle & Sebastian, Pavement…) and like none at the same time.
Released on July 12, 1999, their second album, The Fidelity Warswhich is celebrating its 25th anniversary, was the basis for their consolidation as an almost private cult phenomenon, which earned them the reputation of “Britain’s biggest small band”, as some media and fans began to refer to them. Discovered to the general public by the popular radio presenter John Peel, Hefner were far from achieving any kind of massive success, but they did find a privileged place among the specialized press and on the shelves of fans who came to listen to them and buy their records, attracted either by their decadent stories of frustrated relationships or by their covers with an old comic book feel. In The Fidelity Warssinger-songwriter Darren Hayman established the profile that has followed him ever since, that of an expert chronicler of breakups, heartbreak, dependency and endemic insecurities when it comes to emotional re-arming.
“He recognizes that his (love) collapse is due to neurotic self-hatred and paranoia, not to women. The vulnerability and self-loathing that make him so amazing The Fidelity Wars They are also what condemns Haymen’s relations,” the media analyzed in 2002 Pop Matters in a retrospective reviewThe album was presented as a journey by the author through his particular personal cycle of despair, nihilism, nostalgia and rebirth.
sentimental, with the uncertainty of whether the wheel will turn fatally again. Its two hymns, The Hymn For The Cigarettes and The Hymn For The Alcoholdeal with relationships without a future with echoes of past relationships, in Fat Kelly’s Teeth explores his guilt, arguments and justifications for being unfaithful, in I Took Her Love For Granted (I took his love for granted) dissects his lack of involvement in a romance after the event, when it is irremediable and unrecoverable, while in the ambiguous I Love Only You He reconciles himself with the authenticity of the love he has experienced, but from the terror of not being able to overcome it and love anyone equally.
Music journalist Darryl Sterdan, of Tinnitustells ICON that despite having reviewed more than 25,000 albums throughout his career, he especially remembers the surprise he felt when he heard The Fidelity Warswhich he calls “smart, sharp, intriguing and idiosyncratic.” “The first and most important reason is the songwriting,” he explains. “Hayman was (and presumably still is) a gifted songwriter. Songwriting is a magical art, it takes wit and wisdom, intellect and emotion, being accessible yet mysterious, being fearless and prepared to delve into one’s deepest, darkest, most personal thoughts, fears, loves, losses and regrets, to create stories that have universal resonance. He has repeatedly achieved this. And the unmistakable theme of romantic heartbreak made the album feel unified and focused, rather than a bunch of random songs.”
Sterdan, who once compared Hayman’s style to “a young Ray Davies (The Kinks frontman) performing Jonathan Richman’s songbook,” does not believe that romantic concerns are necessarily the musician’s theme par excellence, although it seems to be the most associated with his figure. “Breaking God’s Heart (Hefner’s 1998 debut), true to its title, had more songs about faith and religion, while We Love The City (the third, from 2000) seemed to be a bit more sociopolitical and geographically specific. I guess Hayman tended to go down these kinds of thematic rabbit holes when he was writing,” he observes. After a fourth album, Dead Media (2001), where synthesizers gained presence, the singer formed with Hefner’s bassist, John Morrison, a brief new project of a more electronic nature, The French. In an interview in 2005after a hiatus of more than two years by Hefner only interrupted by a tribute concert to John Peel (who died in 2004), the singer confirmed that the group was no longer active and that The French would not be either: Morrison did not wish to give any more concerts.
He also said that guitarist Jack Hayter had suggested that Hefner meet when Margaret Thatcher died – the song The Day That Thatcher Dies (The Day Thatcher Dies), from the third album, is possibly the most popular of the group: “Thatcher is a dark page that suggests as many feelings as we can express in a love song”, The singer explained in an interviewa, although in the aforementioned 2013, the year of the death of the former conservative leader, this return to the stage did not take place. Five years earlier, the singer had already ventured to do so in another interview: “We’re not the kind of band that gets together. Hefner, you’d like us less if we did, believe me.” And he also left another pearl of wisdom to clarify his lack of interest in popular concessions and being in the scent of crowds: “Touring is shit, only idiots and drummers enjoy it. I like playing live, but touring is miserable and sucks the life out of you.”
More breakup songs
British independent record label Fika Recordings uses Darren Hayman’s emotional turmoil as a direct comic gimmick to promote their new project.More Break-Up Songs (More breakup songs) “It’s a collection of 12 songs about breakups because Darren has broken up with someone. Again,” reads the press release. The aforementioned also adds his point of view to the text: “I suck, but it’s nobody’s fault. It makes me very sad, but I have to work these things into songs and there is always something to learn. I try to make songs about breakups that can be understood by both parties. I’m not interested in unpleasant songs.”
This is the first album by Hayman’s new band, New Starts, “which evokes the poppiest extremes of the new wave and the most guitar-driven rock”, with declared influences from The Cars, The Breeders, Bay City Rollers, The Velvet Underground and ZZ Top. The singer and guitarist has explained that he missed having a band and creating something collectively, beyond what some supporting musicians could offer: in the previews of the album, which is published on August 16, the clash between the former leader of Hefner and the guitarist Joely Smith, linked to the band, is striking. noise popwhich gives the former’s compositions a more urgent and electric feel. According to the artist, More Break-Up Songs It will be “the album that a large part of the public has wanted me to make for a long time.”
Extraordinarily prolific, since the end of Hefner and The French, Darren Hayman has released 22 solo studio albums and is also a noted watercolor painter, that sells originals at reasonable prices on the Internet and is currently completing a challenge based to represent each of the 272 London Underground stations. With or without breakups, it is clear that he has no serious difficulties in keeping his mind occupied and that his compositional processes, as he suggests, seem to be part of a well-oiled mechanism to metabolize and process personal ups and downs. His consistency indicates that, at least from the creative side, it works for him, in paradoxical harmony with what he sang in the chorus of I Love Only Youthe last song of The Fidelity Wars: “Who gave you the right / To bruise my little heart? / You tore it right apart / I was saving it for art” (Who gave you the right to bruise my little heart? You destroyed it, I was saving it for art.)
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