Darren Hayman - The Ship’s Piano

A calm, controlled response to that horrendous Nottingham mugging in 2009, ‘The Ship’s Piano’ details Hayman’s temporarily crushed and subdued persona recuperating and bouncing back. The record involves an entirely comprehendible change: the Hefner man’s skull was left fractured and as a result, suffering from dizziness and deafness in one ear, he was unable to stand the heavier amplified guitars of old; consequentially this is an album centred on voice and fold-out piano almost sole. It’s all direct straightforward ditties about love, despair and recovery, but it’s an album that’s also lucid, guileless and easy on the ear. Indeed this may well be his best work since the Hefner days – a coolly defiant two-fingers if ever there was one (were two?!).

All these songs were written on his ‘ship’s piano’ (a colloquial term which refers to small-scale pianos that were used on boats). The placid title track in fact elicits a swaying cruise-liner as though Hayman were our highbrow bingo-equivalent aboard ship. His whistleable melody line is only propped up by trouble-free piano chords and reclusive drum patters but there’s something inherently alluring and attention-snatching about it. Its stark simplicity and dark one-liners such as ‘there was no piano at the funeral, just a place to rest the wine’ recall a stripped-back ‘Piazza, New York Catcher’-era Belle & Seb and succeed in giving me the shivers.

The album doesn’t really venture into pastures new elsewhere. Tender and down-tempo throughout, his certain tristesse perpetually mills around: be it the heartache and loneliness of ‘Old House’ or the lovelorn ‘Josephine’. Opener ‘I Taught You How To Dance’, however, epitomises what Hayman does best: uncomfortable and black humorous love songs. And despite his reversion to simpler lyricisms and first person anecdotes, Hayman still sounds like his usual articulate and glib, wry and macabre self. He recently declared that ‘[He] kept imagining the sounds [he] wanted as round and smooth, like well-worn pebbles.’ And he’s right – the album as a whole is sanded and rounded, well-worn and complete. Yes - it’s slightly monotonous in places - but all in all ‘The Ship’s Piano’ is a rewarding, introspective listen from one of the UK’s most under-appreciated singer-songwriters. All aboard, then.