Adventures in Hi-Fi
Darren Hayes - This Delicate Thing We've Made (2007)
posted on gratifyingtunes.wordpress.com
By Brandon
Monday, November 12th, 2007

Darren Hayes has been in the music industry since his first album with Savage Garden was released in 1997 and this, his 3rd solo record, has proven to be his own little bit of rebellion against the very industry that has made him a rich and famous man.

After Savage Garden disbanded in 2001, Darren stayed on with Sony Records and recorded two solo albums, Spin (2002) and The Tension and the Spark (2004). Spin proved to be little more than an over-produced and yet slightly less calculated Savage Garden album. Tension and the Spark, however, is where things took a turn for the better artistically for Hayes. An electronic Ray of Light-esque collection with deeply personal lyrics, and the album that Darren proclaimed to be his masterpiece. Unfortunately, Sony Music did not share the same sentiment, and chose to shelve the album in the United States, calling it "career suicide". While it was released in the U.K. and Australia, and was hailed by critics as the best work of his career, it also proved to be his lowest-selling.

In the following year, Darren began work on a new project and nearly completed it, deciding near the end of production that he just was not satisfied with it. The end result of this experience was that a decision was made to leave Sony entirely, start his own record label (Powdered Sugar), and do things his way next time.

He teamed up with an unlikely producer, Justin Shave, a backup keyboardist from his last tour, and began work on what would become This Delicate Thing We've Made. Not only did they write very unconventional material for the project, but Hayes also began to promote the project primarily through MySpace months before its release, writing blogs about the writing/recording process and even posting YouTube video blogs from the studio.

Two animated videos ("Step Into The Light" and "Who Would Have Thought"), done by Hayes' husband, Richard Cullen, were released even before the first single was announced, and the song MP3s were available on MySpace as well, giving fans a taste of the new album's sound. It was also announced that the album would actually be a double-CD set of all-new material.

The final result musically is a fantastic mix of the conventional Savage Garden/Darren Hayes type of material and the electronic sounds of The Tension and the Spark. The majority of the album focuses on Hayes' obsession with time travel, although it's done in a way that is not overly self-indulgent or, well, too weird. The emerging theme is basically "what would you change if you could travel through time?

While there are a few dead spots ("Listen All You People" will remind you of Cher's "Different Kind of Love Song" and "The Tuning of Violins" sounds like it belongs on Spin), it seems to go with the territory. I've heard few double albums that were excellent through and through. The overall project is a shining example that Hayes is capable of much more than conventional pop music.

Hayes scored the same synthesizer used on Kate Bush's Hounds of Love on EBay, and it's used in conjunction with several acoustic instruments to achieve a unique sound for many of the tracks. Another treat is the use of voice rather than other instruments for a great deal of the accompaniment. On several tracks, Hayes' voice is the overruling backing instrument, although it may be prerecorded, filtered, and spit out in a number of inventive ways.

The first two singles are "On The Verge of Something Wonderful" and "Me Myself & (I)", but the highlights of the album go far beyond those two tracks. "A Fear of Falling Under", "How To Build a Time Machine", and "Setting Sun" are unlikely singles due to their unconventional structure and lyrics, but are gems all the same. "Lucky Town" and "I Just Want You to Love Me" are reminiscent of the Savage Garden material, and "Bombs Up In My Face" and "The Only One" unleash Shave's electronic programming abilities to produce Hayes' voice in a setting unlike anything you've ever heard.

It seems Darren Hayes is no longer interested in pleasing a record company, critics, politicians, or anyone else but himself artistically - the point in any artist's career where things really get good.

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