| · Our little Hayden, all grown up.
From his earliest emergence from his parents’ basement with an armful of lo-fi complaints, Hayden has constantly rested in the shadows of his heroes. Despite his growing arsenal of top-shelf songs, even last year’s Live at Convocation Hall (a lengthy two-CD live document) was brightened up immeasurably by a spot-on cover of Neil Young’s "Tell Me Why."
On Elk Lake Serenade, however, Hayden embraces his influences and takes dead aim at joining them as an equal instead of just a follower. On "Hollywood Ending," the tiny "Through The Rads" and "Home By Saturday," Hayden pulls out his best Young riffs and decks them out with pedal steel and melodies that stick. "My Wife" goes new wave with amped-up guitars and space-noise synths, a near-perfect bit of soda pop, and opener "Wide Eyes" matches plaintive strings and piano in an elegiac stunner of a song.
Whereas Hayden’s Skyscraper National Park was short and sweet, only occasionally straying from the road, the 15-track strong Elk Lake Serenade could stand to lose two or three of its weakest interludes. That said, his flimsiest songs are still better than most anyone else in the singer-songwriter game of late, and if anything’s wrong with Elk Lake Serenade, it’s simply an example of too much of a good thing – as if all of Hayden’s ideas are too precious to shelve away in the vaults.
It feels like just yesterday when Hayden was still a kid with a grunge fixation and an allowance too small for a fuzz box. Now, Hayden’s finally out of the basement for good.
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