Of all Darren Hayman’s side projects – and there have been many – Hayman, Watkins, Trout and Lee is perhaps the most approachable. There’s no overarching theme, no grand concept, just four people in a house making music together. This was how it was meant to be from the start: Hayman, along with his Secondary Modern bandmate David Watkins, conceived the quartet as an exercise in making music entirely without ego, an antidote to the dubious trappings of the musical milieu their day jobs had landed them in. Joined by fiddle player Dan Mayfield and Wave Pictures frontman David Tattersall, they released their first and so far only album in 2008. It was an instantly lovable combination of witty, lovelorn originals and artfully chosen covers played in a style that can only be described as East London bluegrass.
Now it’s being released, with a couple of bonus covers thrown in for good measure, and it’s an absolute joy to rediscover these slices of kitchen sink country. The overall aesthetic is one of close-knit, co-operative DIY. Think The Basement Tapes with more banjos. Vocals and instruments are shared around. The genre markers of country and bluegrass are there on every track, but you don’t have to be a fan of those things to love this record. The self-written songs in particular have that unabashed Englishness – eccentric but not quaint – that became Hayman’s stock in trade. Opener Sly and the Family Stone is a Hefner-esque character study, an acutely observed and funny account of a relationship played out against financial hardship, with a chorus so simple and so catchy it seems almost improper. Continuing the habit of naming songs after other musical artists, Fine Young Cannibals sees Tattersall put in a sweet, sad vocal performance backed up by some intricate picking.
The covers and traditional songs are well-chosen. Jam-Eater Blues sees Tattersall gleefully stomp his way through a Mountain Goats favourite. Townes Van Zandt’s Tecumseh Valley and Loretta, with Tattersall again taking the lead, are both suitably tender. Huey ‘Piano’ Smith’s High Blood Pressure adroitly adopts the call-and-response choruses of vocal jazz into a joyous folk setting. The instrumental Buckdancer’s Choice – most famously recorded by John Fahey – gets the fiddle and banjo treatment and becomes a delightful foot-tapper, and Hayman has great fun relocating Hesitation Blues from Alabama to Bermondsey. Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine is an old American march given a downhome, folksy feel.
The originals are, if anything, even more impressive. I Should Have Told Her is typical Hayman in the confessional mode, full of small but crushing details. His ironically sparkling Dirty Tube Train takes a furtive peek at the grimier side of sex and the city. The instrumental Beulah Crossing the Marshes has a jovial urgency. Watkins’ languid country narrative Bethnal Green is a spellbinding highlight, full of swooning, swooping fiddle, and That’s Why She Left Me (Why She Came Back) is another high point, Hayman shuffling through a brisk breakdown of the ambiguities of modern relationships, as is his speciality.
The draw for completists and superfans will be those two previously unreleased covers. Jonathan Richman’s Since She Started to Ride sees Tattersall and Hayman trade vocals in a way that somehow makes the original’s gleeful spirit even more apparent, and Hotter Than Mojave in My Heart is an absolute cracker from the pen of the perennially underrated Iris DeMent. A punchy, unapologetically celebratory country song with an insanely poppy chorus, it sees Hayman at his chirpiest.
With collaborations like this, there is always the danger that they will end up as a footnote in the history of their creators. Hayman, Watkins, Trout and Lee deserve better. It is a great album in its own right, and with any luck, this reissue will see it take its place among the career highlights of all those involved.
Out Now – Order via Bandcamp: https://darrenhayman.bandcamp.com/track/hotter-than-mojave-in-my-heart
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