Hayden Lounge Ax, July 12
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Hayden (formerly Paul Desser), a 25-year-old singer-songwriter from suburban Toronto, has been saddled with the burden of being hailed as the Canadian Beck–Beck being the 26-year-old LA postmodern folk-punk phenom whose fluke 1995 hit “Loser” saddled him with the transient title of king of the slackers. It’s a lazy shorthand that diminishes Hayden, Beck, and, as always, Canada. If anything, Beck’s a Canuck like us all, his state of mind actually a province. After all, less than a letter and a border separate loser and hoser. “The Canadian Beck” is therefore redundant. But Hayden isn’t.
Hayden’s debut album, Everything I Long For, recorded mostly on four-track in his bedroom at his parents’ house and released in 1995 on his own Hardwood label (reissued this year on Outpost, a Geffen imprint), evokes Beck only superficially. They have in common a record label, an apparent distaste for surnames, a leaning toward folk-rock, and a gift for cadence. But where Beck is an impressionist, Hayden is a realist. Where Beck is a syncretist, Hayden is a traditionalist.
Superchunk’s 1990 single “Slack Motherfucker” was arguably the first slacker anthem, but its pop-punk attack (“I’m working / But I’m not working for you”) was incongruously energetic–this was music for coming off the two-to-ten shift at the Kinko’s in Chapel Hill all coffeed up and just in time to catch Flat Duo Jets at the Cat’s Cradle. A true slacker anthem, though, ought to have the feel of days on call, sick days, days to be spent finding a job but not looking–even the loping pop-hop groove of “Loser” threatened to upset the torpor.
