Spin Album Review
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Any thoughts that what we’re in for here is simply Savage Garden version 3.0 are quickly dismissed when the now-blond popstar known as Darren Hayes delivers Strange Relationship - Spin’s opening and best track.
A testament to the notion that mountains of studio trickery can actually have a good effect on a song, Strange Relationship really is the sum of its parts. A brilliant pop beat emphasised in all the right ways, real strings run through machinery until they sound fake, Hayes layering his harmonies until they sound like a string section unto themselves... it all builds and builds until the word “HIT” becomes visible from miles away. So it sets the stage - not only because it acts as an immediate signal that the former Savage Garden vocalist Hayes is b-a-c-k, s-o-l-o, but because it signals that Hayes is ready to explore, indulge his musical fantasies and perhaps even lean over the edge once or twice. As Spin plays on, it becomes clear that the indulging of musical fantasies is probably the biggest factor at play here. Every song reeks with the purpose that Hayes must surely have had in mind - you can just see him in the studio declaring, “What I hear on this one is Bad-era Michael Jackson. Let’s get to it!” Now, were he just ripping this stuff off wholesale, Spin would suck the big one. But he’s not, and that is what makes Spin in the main a class act. Hayes is clever enough to appropriate these sounds to a point - enough for us to know they’re there, enough for it to sound catchy, familiar, and friendly, but ultimately only to a point where they build a platform from which Hayes can show off his own abilities. Case in point: Crush (1980 Me). It sounds like every Hot Hits 80s compilation ever, combined. And that’s the whole idea. It’s shameless, it ’fesses up to it, it plays upon it, and the cheesy tune perfectly compliments the cutesy “got a little crush... such a rush” lyric. It’s Hayes outing himself as a product of the decade musical taste forgot, but it also lets him display almost every high, low and mid-point his voice is capable of, all in a song written so well he’s bound to have manufactured pop groups lining up around the corner asking if he’ll write one of those for them too. He probably won’t do it for ’em, mind, and that’s a smart move. For what Spin makes very clear is that a Darren Hayes song is a Darren Hayes song - his personality oozes from every pore, whether it’s his cheeky, honest take on the high-art, low-art debate in Good Enough, or a painfully honest recounting of a relationship storm, with every microscopic, heartfelt detail included (that’s the drop dead stunning Like it or Not). Luckily, when Darren Hayes’ musical dreams meet Darren Hayes’ lovable personality, the result is usually pop joy of the highest order. Sometimes, of course, it’s pop balladry of the ‘that’s-a-bit-too-much-for-me-now-thanks’ order. Thing is, whichever road it takes on Spin - and this could be the bit that puts somewhat of a dampener on Hayes’ career right now - it’s consistently a older pop, not so much about to draw the kids in droves, as it is about to draw their mothers. This is what happens when all your reference points are a couple of decades in the past. Still, mums need music too, right? And rest assured that if you keep Spin spinning, you’re bound to overcome ballad fatigue and find another gem in just another track or so. |