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Lost In Music: Darren Hayes – Secret Codes and Battleships
Posted by: Matt Walton in Music 4 September 2013
We had one goal before we started writing this; don’t write about Savage Garden. Darren has moved so far beyond what the band were, it seems lazy and tired to make the reference and patronising to an artist who has been solo for longer, and released more music alone than with his former duo.
However, it’s just not possible. Savage Garden were huge. Bigger than you remember… No, even bigger than that. To paraphrase that Crowded House (ask your mum) greatest hits ad from years ago, ‘You know more Savage Garden songs than you think you do.’
Their first album, the imaginatively titled
Savage Garden, went 12 x platinum in Australia, 2 x platinum in the UK and 7 x platinum in the US. 'Truly Madly Deeply' knocked Elton’s 'Candle In The Wind' off the top spot in the US and went on to be the most played song on radio that year. Their second album,
Affirmation, was a monster too and 'I Knew I Loved You' copied the success of 'Truly Madly Deeply' by becoming the most played song on American radio of the year.
They disbanded as quickly as they arrived while a greatest hits collection,
Truly Madly Completely, was put out six years later. For most acts who have only released two albums this may seem a little unnecessary, but from just those two albums, fifteen singles were dropped in various territories.
Since then Darren has released the poppy
Spin, the dark and brooding
The Tension and The Spark, the experimental, two-disc, concept album
This Delicate Thing We’ve Made, and most recently, the polished and accomplished
Secret Codes and Battleships.
The album came about almost by accident when Darren was writing for other artists, but realised during the process that he was actually writing Darren Hayes songs. He then announced that he was working on a new album which was going to be ‘pop with a capital p’.
The first single from the album, 'Talk Talk Talk'
, is an electro-pop stomper that sets out the stall, thematically, for the rest of the album - relationships. A difficult album to listen to at times, some of the lyrics and melodies are utterly heart-wrenching. It’s surprising to learn that Darren was in a stable relationship at the time, and had been for quite some time, with husband Richard Cullen.
Darren released the singles from the album in different orders in different territories, which brought back memories for us of growing up as pop fans in the 90s and discovering months or even years after the fact that some territories got different artwork or a different tracklist. Sadly, in 2011 there was no such slow release of information, and rather than creating little titbits for eagle-eyed fans to discover as time went on, it just seemed rather confusing.
'Black Out The Sun' and 'Bloodstained Heart' were the second and third singles respectively in the UK. The first was originally written for Leona Lewis and is a thumping, almost militaristic beat with haunting choral vocals layered over the top before Darren’s falsetto is added. It’s a compelling and distressing song about the end of a relationship with lyrics like, ‘There’s nobody else who can hurt like you hurt me / I don’t wanna be lonely / And there’s no other way / There’s no joy / There’s no meaning / Just this hollowed out feeling’, which cut like a knife.
'Bloodstained Heart' picks up the pace a bit, but as you can probably guess from the title, is not exactly jolly. A song about being there for someone else when they are going through something and you want to help. The song starts quiet and soft and builds as it approaches each chorus before exploding into a glorious middle eight and a brilliant final rendition of the chorus.
The album is absolutely jam-packed with songs crying out to be singles, such as 'Nearly Love', with its delightful backing track with so many layers and lyrics about loving someone only slightly less than you once did, but that it isn't enough to carry on.
'God Walking Into The Room' is another highlight. An absolutely beautiful song, which at it’s most basic is a straight-up love song directed at one person with lyrics like: ‘You bring me love / You lift me up / Every time we kiss / It’s like god walking into the room’. It's the kind of song that makes you crave a relationship that is this intense.
The self-deprecating 'Hurt'
sees Darren listing his flaws: ‘If you want something broke you’d better give it to me / Got a way of disappointing like you wouldn't believe.’ The song is basically that moment in a movie when one of the characters think they aren't good enough for the object of their affections and pushes them away because they think they’ll be better off with somebody else.
Closing the album is the haunting 'The Siren’s Call'; a perfect ending to the collection. It sounds like it was written to be the last song on an album, in a time when the album was an artform and not just a bunch of songs on the same piece of plastic. It would never be a single, it’s too subtle, but stick it on to the end of the collection and it’s worth the wait. It finishes the emotional rollercoaster and brings you softly back down after the previous 11 tracks which will have turned you upside-down and inside-out emotionally.
But it doesn't end there! Darren is nothing if not prolific, the deluxe edition (and collector’s edition) expand the album further and it’s really worth getting hold of a copy or spending the extra couple of quid on iTunes for 'Explode'
and 'Tiny Little Flashlights' alone, but the absolute apex of the album comes in the form of 'Glorious'
.
It’s over six minutes long and opens with the lines: ‘You will never get older and you will never feel pain / Or fill the room with laughter like you used to.’ To cut to the chase, it’s about someone dying way before their time, much too young. It’s traumatic and distressing and difficult to listen to, but it’s also euphoric and hopeful and joyous. The melody bounces along as the lyrics cut through explaining that the person’s voice will never be heard again but the world will still continue. Then at the chorus, the tables are turned, the melody drops away and Darren’s voice becomes more hopeful as he sings: ‘And you will always remain in my heart forever young / Sun and wind won’t change you, you’ll escape the hands of time'. Just as you thought you were getting into it and had managed to compose yourself a bit, the middle eight kicks in: ‘I know the rules of the game / For every sunset a light has to fade / But, baby, a light like yours was so glorious’, and you’re a wreck again.
It might sound like it’s all a bit much for a pop album, but it does exactly what music should do, it makes you actually feel something. We’ve got so used to this idea that music is something that sounds good on the radio and has you humming along all day – and that’s great, it’s important. But who had an emotional response to 'Poker Face'?
Darren Hayes shows it’s possible to do both; create beautiful sing-along melodies, but make music that means something at the same time. For the uninitiated,
Secret Codes and Battleships is a great starting point.
The standard edition is available from Amazon and the deluxe edition can be found on iTunes.
