Alright, now I know this should probably be a comment on kristiana's post from about 5 minutes ago, rather than a whole new post, but I can't help myself. It seems people have been pretty tough on Hayden, and I wanted to post something on how much I think he's great (well, I guess I mean his first album, since I'm not familiar with his other ones - but when I can rub two nickles together, I swear I'm gonna head down to a record shop (or itunes since I'm not in Toronto or Canada at the moment) and fix myself up with his latest).
His songs are good because they're not just simple - they're naive to a degree where they just stop being regular, boring. There's a plethora of AA rhymes, like "more" and "store", "I bounced on my bed,/ I hurt my head,/ I'm so red, I thought I'm dead/ from my bunkbed/ - I hate bunkbeds", "I bought a rose to give to you, /a windy day - the petals flew / from a stem unto the street/ I tried to catch them with my feet", there's almost no plucking, and the lyrics couldn't be more simple in meaning to boot.
I think there's a tendency to believe that songs should only sound simple if they're complex in meaning. This album goes against that trend. A comparison with Beck at the time was (and, of course, is) ridiculous; Beck's music at the time is too complex.
I'm posting one of the sweetest songs from Everything I long for.... Maybe it's too sweet, too naive, and too short, but that suits me just fine, and all the more so when I was sixteen and this album came out.
