Photo Credit: Christie Greyerbiehl

On Hey Love, perennial Toronto musician and songwriter Hayden writes the most intimate passage yet in his decades-deep story. The follow-up to 2013’s Us Alone, his sonically warm and emotive debut record on Arts & Crafts, is a heartrending love letter of hope and disarray. Hey Love addresses the widest spectrum of love as its muse, the album’s thirteen songs among Hayden Desser’s most affective, tactile, rousing yet restrained work to date.

On Hey Love’s first single “Nowhere We Cannot Go”, triumphant piano mingles with tattered synthesizer and electric guitar, conjuring resilience from the throes of personal reckoning. Both familiar and new, “Nowhere That We Cannot Go” places us on the rickety frontier of Hayden’s home studio, where the certainty of pain and reward both figure prominently on the horizon.

The title track, “Hey Love”, a languid anthem exposed by chiming pedal steel, explores the album’s dialogue about loves both comfortable and disconnected, exhilarating and naive, with Hayden’s woozy pre-dawn falsetto propped up by a watchful chorus. Whether to his loyal listeners or to a lovely subject, Hayden sings plaintively: “It’s been so rough, we have been through more than enough / But without this love, there would be no reason for either of us.” No clearer is this heard than on “Troubled Times”, with its brilliant juxtaposition of the apocalypse-in-progress (“If it’s not one thing it is another / These are sure troubled times”) against a lilting backbeat and a soulful sun-soaked shuffle.

PRE-ORDER HEY LOVE TO UNLOCK A PERSONAL ADVANCE STREAM OF THE ALBUM HERE

From the arresting low register of his 1996 arrival, Everything I Long For, through the enigmatic Skyscraper National Park (2001), and the steadfastly fragile Elk-Lake Serenade (2004), Hayden has woven one of the most consistent through-lines of musical narratives imaginable, leading his audience through a scrapbook of downtimes fought and resolved, love lost and love solved. Hey Love is a snapshot of this relationship: Hayden at his most prolific, and perhaps Hayden at his most celebrated.

Hey Love arrives only two years after his last release, on the inspiration of Dream Serenade: Hayden and wife Christie Greyerbiehl’s inaugural benefit for Toronto’s Beverley St. School for developmentally disabled children (October 2014 at Massey Hall). The album was performed and produced almost entirely by Hayden at his Toronto home studio, Skyscraper National Park. Additional recordings took place at Revolution Studio in Toronto with contributions from his live band featuring Jay McCarrol, Taylor Knox, and JJ Ipsen. The foursome hits the road with Dan Mangan + Blacksmith in February with Hey Love hitting streets on March 24, 2015. All tour dates can be found HERE and are also listed below.

http://wasteyourdaysaway.com/
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https://twitter.com/haydendesser

Hayden Canadian Tour Dates:
Feb 18 – Halifax, NS – Rebecca Cohn Auditorium^
Feb 19 – Fredericton, NB – The Fredericton Playhouse^
Feb 20 – Quebec City, QC – Imperial#
Feb 21 – Montreal, QC – Corona Theatre^
Feb 24 – Kingston, ON – Grand Theatre^
Feb 26 – London, ON – London Music Hall^
Feb 27 – Ottawa, ON – Theatre at NAC^
Feb 28 –  Toronto, ON – Massey Hall#
Mar 1 – Guelph, ON – River Run Centre^
Mar 5 – Winnipeg, MB – The Garrick^
Mar 6 – Saskatoon, SK – O’Brians Event Centre^
Mar 7 – Regina, SK – Darke Hall^
Mar 9 – Banff, AB – Eric Harvie Theatre^
Mar 10 – Calgary, AB – Jack Singer Concert Hall^
Mar 11 – Edmonton, AB – Francis Winspear Centre for Music^
Mar 13 – Vancouver, BC – Vogue Theatre^
Mar 14 – Vancouver, BC – Vogue Theatre^
– w/ Dan Mangan + Blacksmith and Astral Swans
# – w/ Dan Mangan + Blacksmith