Darren Hayman and the Secondary Modern
You’ve probably never heard of Darren Hayman unless you were a big enough fan of John Peel to have heard the session his band Hefner did with him. They broke up in 2002 but Hayman is still writing singalongs with a distinct local flavour.
This album, recorded over twelve days, is named after the kind of school British kids used to have to go to if they failed the entrance exams to the nearby Grammar school. Friends such as ‘avant brass man’ Terry Edwards and ‘folk-tronica elder men’ Ellis Island Sound stayed and recorded with Hayman in Shoreditch while he wrote songs on the back of a napkin (well, maybe) and raided the nearby ‘Duke of Uke’ shop for mandolins, ukuleles and fiddles as they were needed and quickly put his friends to work with them. ‘Crocodile’ is about the love affair from the perspective of a Lacoste logo, apparently. In his saner moments, Hayman sings about the declining standards of art education in secondary schools and pupil reunions.
There’s a lot of charm here, so long as you’re willing to get past the deliberate inanities to find it. Leading the big band of collaborators, Hayman sounds like he’s making it up as he goes along. ‘I’m sorry/and you are too/but these things/come so hard to you’ he sings, while someone plays what sounds like a kazoo designed for mice. Even when it sounds like all his friends are in the room and playing three instruments each, the wordplay of the songs comes through and paint supplies for kids whose lives turn out to be dull suddenly seem fascinating.
It’s as idiosyncratic to sing about the school classrooms of Britain as anywhere else in the country but Hayman is a pretty idiosyncratic guy. Furiously productive, he’s like Brian Wilson minus the money, commercial appeal and a lot of the talent. But he’s our Brian Wilson.