ESSEX ARMS (CD/Vinyl and download)
Released October 2010 Buy from here
Winter Makes You want me more has been released as the third single from Essex Arms. Backed with exclusive song '0s and 1s' the song is available from iTunes.
Calling Out Your Name Again is the second single from Essex Arms and features Emmy the Great and is available on seven inch in record shops and from here as well as iTunes.
'Nothing You Can Do About It' is the first single to be released from Essex Arms. Available digitally from 16th August backed by exclusive song 'Trees and Leaves'
The single 'Nothing You Can Do About It' is now available on iTunes. http://tiny.cc/enf87
FortunaPOP! and Acuarela Records FPOP95 Format: CD / Vinyl / Download Release date: 04 October 2010
The new album from ex-Hefner man Darren Hayman and his band of folk-rock renegades is their finest work to date
Essex Arms is the new album by Darren Hayman And The Secondary Modern. Darren, of course, is best known as the singer-songwriter of the phenomenally successful and much-loved Hefner, although it's worth noting that he has now made six albums to Hefner's four. In the latest incarnation of the constantly morphing Secondary Modern he has gathered together a set of musicians with the chops to do justice to his increasingly complex and mature songs; a tight, tough, but soulful folk-rock orchestra reminiscent of a more urban Incredible String Band or an Anglicized Lambchop.
The second in a proposed trilogy of albums about Hayman's home county of Essex, Essex Arms is a conceptual piece about the East Anglian rural underbelly. Whereas Pram Town (2009) dealt with the displacement and ennui of living in a new town (Harlow) - and received the best reviews of Hayman's post-Hefner career - Essex Arms takes the narrative to the countryside.
"I was trying to make innovative rock music without the use of electrically amplified instruments. I wanted oboes and harmoniums to take the place of synthesizers and samplers, to make something purely acoustic that wasn't polite or ineffectual."
Featuring contributions from The Wave Pictures, Fanfarlo and, on the single 'Calling Out Your Name', a duet with Emmy the Great, Essex Arms achieves all that and more as Hayman paints his pictures of love and squalor in the fields and lanes on the edge of London, in the process reaffirming his credentials as one of Britain's finest living songwriters.
"London's laureate of sexual dysfunction, discomfort, and dog-eared under-achievement... the match of Ray Davies, or any of the quintessentially English masters." (The Guardian)
The Green and the Grey
A special low price CD and download featuring 16 additional songs from the Essex Arms sessions.
The sessions for Essex Arms were unlike those for many of Darren's records. Mulitple versions and many unused songs were recorded. We've collected the best on this low price CD and download
Songs: The Green and the Grey, Essex Arms, Nothing You Can Do About It (alternate version), No Undo, Cocoa Butter (demo version), Until We Got Bored, Beach Head, Sleep Through the Afternoon, Horror Video Nights, She Can Cook, The Winter Makes You Want Me More (alternate version), Spiderman Beats Ironman (alternate version), 0s and 1s, Sting and his Lute, Trees and Leaves
A new video for new single 'Winter Makes You Want Me More'
Released on iTunes on Febuary 28th with the previously unreleased '0s and 1s' as a b-side.
