Album Review: Hayden Grows Up And Looks Ahead With New Album “Us Alone”

By: Laura Stanley –

If I were to say that Hayden Desser is an institution in Canadian music, I’m sure I would not be alone in my praise. Since his emotionally raw 1995 debut record Everything I Long For, Hayden has created folk-rooted, story-telling, heartfelt music which after six album, has touched a lot of people. After a four-year absence, Hayden returns to making music with his seventh record, Us Alone.

In an autobiographical record, Hayden’s songwriting maturity is clear. No longer writing about “young lovers,” as he says in album opener “Motel,” Hayden writes about the experiences and perspectives he has gained as a new father amongst other things.  Though still touching on themes of escapism, a la “Dynamite Walls,” Hayden’s lyrical perspective has changed, now connecting a car ride getaway from mundane life, as found in “Motel,” to the act of driving the car around to get his new baby daughter to fall asleep.

In a song for song lovers, “Almost Everything” is a brilliant career retrospective all in about five minutes. Fittingly including a harmonica like that found in his older work, Hayden takes us back to his sudden surge to fame in the late ’90s, his evolving views on making music, singing, “I’m recording once again while my kid is upstairs in bed and I’ll admit that now and then, that some nights when I’m strumming, or maybe just drumming, the music is still everything…well almost everything.”

While the instrumentation is often the most crucial part of Hayden’s songs, there’s nothing complex about the instrumentation in Us Alone. Primarily using a steady drum beat, simple piano melodies, relatively soft guitar parts, Hayden is still able to produce upbeat songs despite this and his recognizable hushed voice.

Exchanging vocal parts with musician Lou Canon, whose debut record Hayden produced on his record label and who will also be joining him on his upcoming tour, “Blurry Nights” captures a poppier side of the record while the pop-rock guitar strums of “Rainy Saturday” does the same.

In a gut-punch of an ending, “Instructions” is the most poignant Hayden song to date. If you’re the kind of emotional Hayden fan who sat and cried when listening to the ghost story of “1939” from Elk-Lake Serenade, prepare yourself for this one. Complimented by melancholic instrumentation, Hayden discloses his wishes after death: “put all my ashes in a can and drive up North in the van. Roll the windows down and play The Band.” Perhaps prompted by the birth of his daughter, it’s funny how the birth of a child always makes one think about their own mortality, “Instructions” further cements Hayden as one of the strongest Canadian songwriters.

As Hayden fans know, he has never been one to rely on singer-songwriter cliches like a once catchy hook or clever choruses, though any sort of cleverness or catchiness is not absent, but rather creating songs that have true staying power. Us Alone is a record that looks both back at an already successful music career and celebrates what the future holds for both Hayden and his fans.

Essential Tracks: “Blurry Nights,” “Almost Everything,” and “Instructions.”