New Music: Darren Hayman – Darling, All the Time

Artist and Hefner alumnus Darren Hayman has sprung a most welcome surprise album on us, the moving I’m Your Team.

It works as a reflection on his recent past, personally, artistically, and musically. He follows up September’s TV Themes EP with his project. The French, with a collection of songs that were written in the wake of his 2022 album, You Will Not Die. They’re not an extension of the album but do continue its theme of minimal and maybe downbeat numbers.

Darling, All the Time is a love song, detailing the ways that can be expressed in words and deeds, finding everyday and obscure pairings to symbolise interdependence. A flint and a spark mean little in the modern day, but it has a rudimentary romance to it. A flint is sharp and utilitarian, exists to bring a spark of life and give life added meaning, light and warmth, added reasons to live. It also gives the song an offbeat charm, one that got my mind wandering off to Leonard Cohen’s Songs of Love and Hate and I’m Your Man, detailing life at specific events and emotions that resonate eternally as if preserved in amber.    

Talking about recording I’m Your Team, which was recorded using a DX7 synthesiser, a TR707 drum machine and a Rickenbacker bass, he says, “At the time, I became obsessed with making these ugly boxes sound sad and beautiful. Like a few of my more recent albums, the songs are direct, recorded solo.”

“Rather than chasing a concept or piece of history, as I’ve been known more for in the last decade or so, I’m reacting to and writing about my own sense of loss, with no characters or other players to hide behind. I’m not sure why I didn’t release it at the time, a loss of confidence perhaps. I now believe that it’s one of the most focused and beautiful records I’ve ever made. I love it.”

I’m Your Team was released on the 16th of October via Audio Antihero; you can hear it on Bandcamp and Spotify. It includes songs like I Will Paint You, which is inspired by another of his loves: painting. He has a rather cool series of watercolours featuring London Underground stations on his website, by the way.

In fact, Hayman will be leading a month’s worth of weekly Thursday painting workshops for all ability levels at Soho Poly in central London between the 12th of November and the 3rd of December.

To find out more about that and his ongoing musical and artistic adventures, be sure to find your way to his TikTok, Instagram, and BlueSky socials.

Header photo by Grant Wilkinson