Find out here with news, discographies, music and more...
Available now:
-image gallery
-discography
Coming Soon:
-sound clips
-fan fiction
-exclusive news and downloads
He's done it again! Just released:
davehayes - Songs for:
Absent Friends
(check back soon for further details and audio clips)
"Ubiquitous iMAGINARY artist David Hayes has done it again. Swept up in what seems a boundless flow of creativity, the twenty-five year old North Bay resident has unleashed on the music community yet another independently styled cassette.
Hayes's latest offering, the wistfully titled *Songs for: absent friends*, is a melancholic voyage through time and place, an
exploration of love and loss that touches on themes broad as politics (the socially charged opening track, "my heart aches, when i
lean to the left"), friendship (the achingly beautiful "you are a star [for - mike baker]") and the intricacies of mid-twenties co- habitation (album closer, the rollicking "He doesn't know").
Present once again are the requisite cover songs, and this time out Hayes offers reinterpretations of Hank Williams, Oasis, Sloan and Bob
Dylan. Perhaps his rendition of "I Am The Cancer" is most striking � gone is the trademark Sloan peppiness, replaced by only the faint, percussive strum of Hayes's notorious Fender acoustic, the lyrics whispered, barely audible. Suddenly, lines like "So long Matthew / I will miss you" become almost heart-wrenchingly sad.
The album is packaged beautifully, the cover art consisting of a single photograph, ostensibly of three of Hayes's "absent friends". But this picture, too, is telling, as in it we see the many faces of Dave Hayes. In the foreground, the goateed, grinning, incredulous redhead � representative of Hayes's hipness, joviality and innocence.
The second figure appears sly and showy in his leather jacket and pony-tail; he points an accusing finger at the camera in a parody of
the archetypal Uncle Sam gesture. Yes, Dave Hayes "wants you": he wants you to join him in a war on mediocrity, to rise above the
humdrum of boybands and Protooled corporate rock.
Finally, lurking bleary-eyed in the shadows, is the final face of Dave Hayes � somnambulistic, half-drunk, Buscemi-esque. Here we see
Dave at his most intimate and vulnerable. There exists, after all, beyond the rock star glory, only a man. A man of considerable, almost daunting talents, but a man nonetheless.
*Songs for: absent friends* marks a decided move for the davehayes solo project. This is a record that ventures into new territory,
both musically and lyrically. It is adventurous, and demands active listening; each line and chord change demands our attention. Hayes
is calling to us from the northern Ontario wilderness: he is urging us to look back, but also to move forward � to cherish memory, but
also to strive for new ones.
Highly recommended." - Pasha Malla
