Darren Hayman
The Ship's Piano
Release Date: Dec 6, 2011
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock
Record label: Fortuna Pop
Music Critic Score
How the Music Critic Score works
Album Review: The Ship's Piano by Darren Hayman
Very Good, Based on 2 Critics
Based on rating 7/10
Do you remember the moment you became emotionally immune to the thrill of watching bright lights flicker across the night sky? It is, as pivotal moments go, a real shit: say ta’ra to backseat car rides of an evening, gawping into the abyss as highfalutin thoughts abound of lasers and magic and creating tentacled offspring with purple UFOs; and hello to fascination-maturity, the astrological wonder of yore scarcely returning to remind you it shone in the first place. The music of Darren Hayman is like when, ten years down the line, there’s a shooting star or meteor shower or just a really jeffing superbly bright thing up there, and suddenly all the trinkets of childish fascination you abandoned become interesting again. And you have to hand it to him: beyond turning up on your doorstep with a long-forgotten childhood sweetheart and her willing hand in marriage, that’s effectively as much as you can ask for from a largely solo recording artist.
Opinion: Excellent
Uniquely intimate and very satisfying fare from the ex-Hefner man. Daniel Ross 2011 After being mugged, roughed up and generally given a right good seeing to after a gig in 2009, Darren Hayman’s hearing went. Not in the Beethoven sense, thankfully, but it was still significant. Loud noises became nightmarish squalls to bear grudgingly rather than reasons to jump about and thrash a Telecaster, as they previously were.