Evening Standard/thislondon.co.uk (UK)
OUTGROWN THE SAVAGE GARDEN
Off The Record: by David Smyth, Evening Standard

July 27, 2007

Picture caption: Outlay: Singer Darren Hayes has been forced to dip into his own pocket

OUTGROWN THE SAVAGE GARDEN

It doesn't matter how big you are, it seems there's no such thing as being untouchable in pop. As the falsetto-voiced frontman of the glossy Australian pop duo Savage Garden, Darren Hayes (below) sold some 25 million records in the late Nineties. Now without a record deal, he's been forced to dip into his own pocket to fund the release of his next solo album.

Hayes's solo career was overshadowed by the emergence of a rival also gunning for female fans who'd outgrown boybands, Justin Timberlake. After his record company refused to put out his second solo work in the US, he was forced to go it alone.

Now he's starting from scratch - and sounding humble but positive about it. "All the things I took for granted were taken away from me. It was the beginning of an amazing process," he says.

Hayes is even paying for the effects-packed video to his comeback single, On the Verge of Something Wonderful (out 6 August). "It's still a big operation and if it goes wrong, I've probably lost my nest egg. But I feel good about it."

He probably feels good that he no longer needs to be a pop idol for the ladies. At the peak of Savage Garden's success he realised he was gay and divorced his wife, whom he married at just 23. Now 35, last year he came out publicly and married animator Richard Cullen in a civil ceremony in London - "When I was in Savage Garden, I absolutely did not want to be gay. But I just knew with Richard."

The new record, This Delicate Thing We Made, is a 25-track double album, part pop, part concept work about time travel. Released on 20 August, it has plenty of good tunes but some strange moments too, not least How to Build a Time Machine, which concerns his exalcoholic father's history as a domestic abuser. There's disco-friendly house on Step Into the Light as well as bizarre chipmunk robo-funk on Bombs Up in My Face.

It's new starts all round for Hayes.

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