You Can't Dance In High Heels

Neil Jones on Darren Hayman and A Smile and a Ribbon’s Rebecca Mehlman

So Pop is graspables, it’s the memory struck up in that relationship between ourselves and art, it’s anything we can relate to at any given time, something that catches us, and preserves the moment in it's own little eternity. It's an emotional relationship we all have with Pop at whatever level, and two of the best Pop records of recent times are sitting right here waiting to be screamed about.

Darren Hayman’s second solo LP on the Track and Field label, Darren Hayman and the Secondary Modern, is something he’s been…well, I was going to say “building towards”, but can’t really, because Hefner were such a great band in itself…rather something he’s been “gravitating” towards for a while, certainly with his early solo material, a record that bursts out of the soul of a Pop hero with sumptuous shimmer and mischief. Pop and poetry, music and feeling, relations and obsessions, wit and longing and everything that comes between, Hayman has come up with a bunch of songs that simply have it all.

The general sound of the The Secondary Modern is upbeat, Hayman’s ukulele soaring through with extra light-hearted wonder, and there are just so many of those graspable, brilliant Pop moments, trademark “Hayman/Hefnerisms” and all. Hayman is worthy of his reputation on the underground as the number one indie lyricist bar none (including Jarvis), and this record buzzes with some of his best lines yet, the accompanying extra “musicality” lifting you further in the air. ‘Rochelle’ is a song that smiles and dances away like there’s no tomorrow, a passionate plea to a wayward girlfriend, Hayman’s words at their sweetest as the guitars fly and drums pop (“You should eat when your hungry, you should stop when you’re not, and drink a long glass of water, when you get too hot / All these bad things you say, in such an underhand way / You’ve forgotten how it feels, and you can’t dance in high heels”). ‘She’s Not For Me’ has a ukulele from the gods trickling right through it, and one of the best-sounding, damn coolest pieces of rhythmic Pop writing I've come across as its opening lines (“There was a twitch of the eye of the girl at the quiz night in the pub on Orford Road / there was a rip in the corner of the pocket of her parker jacket hanging so her bare shoulder showed / there was a tang in the vowels of her carefully chosen words, an accent that she didn’t want to show / no, she’s not for me…”).

‘Elizabeth Duke’ will light up any geek lair with its lilting melody and poignancy, its ukulele line and keyboard flourish reminding of Hefner's electronic Dead Media LP but sounding even better, its lyrics holding a wealth of emotion as it ebbs and sways (“I bought you a ring from Elizabeth Duke, took my own sweet time before proposing to you, because all those nights when you looked beautiful I forgot to tell you how much I loved you”). ‘Let’s Go Stealing’, which starts with that strangely evocative guitar solo from ‘The Hymn for the Cigarettes’, shows Hayman in his most outlandishly charming light, a sheer celebration of literary pilfering that’s spectacularly good fun (“Hey hey let’s go stealing, let’s go thieving from the books that we’re reading / Hey hey let’s go stealing, let’s go thieving from the songs that we’re hearing”). ‘Higgins vs Reardon’ even features the innovation of snooker ball percussion, and more lyricism to die for (“She was drunk, in her strapless wedding dress / She was screaming her lungs out, she had something to confess / She married the wrong guy coz he had the blue eyes and now she's crying her tear ducts dry, she married his best friend – and he could warm her heart”), and the classic Hefner sound reappears in ‘Apologise’, which builds subtly into a crescendo that buzzes with contrary magic. And isn't contrary magic what Hayman is all about, creating songs and moments not to slit your throat to, songs and moments of pure exultant - pure affectionate Pop empathy? And how hard can it be to sound like this? Well, we'll just ask Rebecca Mehlman of Malmo’s A Smile and a Ribbon, who’s doing a pretty good job of it herself…

Marrying a shy charm to a stunning musicality, Mehlman is a sort of female take on Hayman, her songs quite redolent of early Hefner with an unmistakeable feminine touch. Hayman even pops up in a song on A Smile and a Ribbon's debut The Boy I Wish I Never Met LP on the Shelflife label, a broad and mischievous hats off that sees Mehlman exceeding in that Haymanesque sexual/emotional frankness. The lines featuring Hayman drew me into the A Smile and a Ribbon world originally, and the track they come from, ‘A Nice Walk in the Park’ is an intricate little song, Mehlman mourning about not being able to listen to Hayman without depressing thoughts of her let-down lover spoiling the moment.

The whole A Smile and a Ribbon ethos seems to be the quintessentially modern Pop, essentially Haymanesque one of snatching innocence from the hands of the prosaic with a mixture of inspired lines and melodies, and you just have to love it. I love Hayman and Mehlman because of the wealth of sadness that freely informs their songs, for their wonderful, honest sentiments and affection, for their lusty modern Pop ambition, and of coarse because they just love to make the music shimmer... Show me anything better than The Secondary Modern and The Boy I Wish I Never Met right now and I’ll bite your hand off for it.

© 2008 Neil Jones

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