The Roads Don't Love You

by

Gemma Hayes

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Gemma Hayes' debut album Night On My Side revealed her to be a complex, mercurial talent with a gift for making inspired music, and the album itself proved to be a considerable critical success. For those, like me, who've been waiting patiently for her new album to drop, and wondering whether it could live up to her brilliant debut - it's finally arrived, and the answer would appear to be a definitive YES.

The Roads Don't Love You is a slightly more conventional singer/songwriter album, less mind-bending than Night On My Side, but no less beautiful in execution. Recorded in L.A, Gemma has surrounded herself with a crack team of musicians including renowned drummer Joey Waronker, bassist Cedric LeMoyne from the sadly missed (well, by me at least) Remy Zero, and a disciplined, demanding producer in Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Travis, Pavement, Beck) who has a way of extracting excellence out of whoever he's involved with. Apparently, Gemma suffered from writers block leading up to this album - but you wouldn't know it from the consistently lovely results here.

Gemma Hayes' songs inhabit a world of beautiful strangers, undeniable attractions, deep longings, lost chances, unresolved feelings and fleeting glimpses of happiness. She addresses all of these themes in the chorus of album opener 'Two Step' - "...stop chasing every little thing that sparks, you carry all you ever need in your heart". This song is Gemma Hayes personified. So too, the bittersweet first single 'Happy/Sad', which, like so much of her work, straddles the line between being happy/sad, calm/on edge, beautiful/ugly with intoxicating ease, and builds to a beautiful climax. 'Easy On The Eye' is hauntingly resonant, and my personal favourite 'Undercover' has a definite Rumours-era Fleetwood mac vibe to it - needless to say it's great - "...man you left me undercover, a gypsy out in nowhere".

As much as I adore Night On My Side, I do have to feel in the right mood to play it - it's a record that demands your full attention, and not really ideal to do the dishes to I guess. Conversely, I can listen to The Road's Don't Love You anytime, anywhere and always really enjoy it.

The Roads Don't Love You is an impressive feat, it's an album that should broaden Gemma Hayes' appeal without sacrficing any of the quality or individuality that make her so compelling to listen to in the first place.

The roads mightn't love her, but I sure do.

First listen: This first song, Two Step, is pretty horribly disappointing. It sounds like an outtake from a Michelle Branch album. It's so commercial and overproduced and super conventionally structured and not guitary at all. I can't believe Gemma would let record company producers or songwriters ruin her music like this, but I can't believe she actually wrote a song this weak and boring by herself. The next track is totally more of the same. The basic slick commercial drumbeat and electronic texturing is in the forefront of the production. Her unique vocals are still intact, but that seems kinda inconsequential at this point. This one sounds more like it should have been on Marion Raven's new substanceless commercial trash album. The electronic sounding percussion is again the dominant element in Happy Sad. The guitar sounds almost equally as processed and inorganic. I can still detect a trace of a real song under the overproduction. I just can't believe any of this is her creative work. Easy On The Eye is the first good song on the album. The lack of percussion and other extraneous elements gives the guitar and vocals some much needed breathing space. Even so, it treads closer to predictable coffehouse folk songwriting than any of her older slow songs. Keep Me Here is another upbeat song, and even though it's still more stiff and commercial that what I expect from Gemma, it is much better than the first three songs, the drumming isn't as processed and pervasive, I can kinda dig it. On Undercover the drum machine beats are back again to ruin everything. It's not quite as objectionable as the first three songs, but it's just so bland, all the chord changes and melodies are buried under the commercial gloss. The most frustrating part is that if she had used the same people and recording process as her first album I think these songs could have turned out ok. I was almost going to just buy this album without listening to it first. Before I heard it I considered Gemma to be one of the top 10 new songwriters to emerge in the last five years, and I've been hanging for a follow up to Night On My Side for what seems like forever. I guess I saved myself from wasting some money, but that seems inconsequential next to the wasted talent that this album is an unfortunate result of. Minus The Bear's new album is no longer my biggest disappointment of the year. 5/10.

A couple weeks later: Ok by the time I got through Nothing Can on my first listen I was starting to feel conflicted about what I'd written, and I couldn't muster up any contempt for Helen which is just a really nice song. Something In My Way was the clincher that forced me to accept that I can't hate this album like I thought I did. It's like a sequel to Let A Good Thing Go. The most rocking song on the album, and the clear highlight. It should have been the first track.

Re-evaluating the first half of the album, I still can't get into Two Step, it's just too bland. Another For The Darkness actually has a great hook on the chorus, the "I don't understand..." part with the three-chord burst of guitar, I can't believe I missed it first time around. The whole song is very nice, and there's a distinct guitar jangle in the background that I really dig. The slick production actually makes this song interesting instead of destorying it like I first thought. Happy Sad isn't much better than Two Step. It reminds me of Hanging Around, the way it starts with a very basic riff, but in this case the chorus doesn't open the song up as much. Easy On The Eye is still nice, but I stand by my previous assessment of it being a bit too cofeehouse folk. I like Another For The Darkness better than it now. Keep Me Here is bland, but it's mainly the fault of the production which is so squeaky clean that the resonant timbre of the guitar which added the extra dimension to her old stuff is totally lost. Undercover is another bland song. Again I blame the production, but in this case it's the guitar just being mixed really low and emphasis placed on the bass and inorganic sounding drums. Everything fades into a drone where all rhythmmic and melodic impact is lost. Did Joey Waronker actually play drums on this album or what? All the percussion sounds electronic. Nothing Can has a guitar riff that reminds me a lot of Phoenix, and some lovely melodic piano backing where you actually can hear the resonant timbre of the instrument for a change. I think that's what really makes most of this album sound so soulless and inorganic. The resonant timbre of the instruments that gave Night On My Side it's atmospheric depth is almost completely missing. Helen is one song that the producer didn't get his claws into. The resonant timbre of the piano, strings, and vocals allows Gemma's songwriting to really shine. Well I'm glad I finally managed to pinpoint that the resonant timbre of instruments was what I felt this album was lacking, instead of just saying "commercial" or "overproduced" and leaving myself open to misinterpretation. I'm still loving Something In My Way. That song just rocks. It even has actual drumming. Horses is another bland song, but in this case I think it's as much due to the chord progressions as the production. I wouldn't be surprised if this song featured the most input from co-writers as Gemma's talent seems conspicuously absent especially in the vocal melody on the chorus. Worst song on the album. The guitar strumming at the start of Tomorrow is very nice, resonant timbre and all that, but it quicky gets buried under layers of less interesting guitar, keyboards, and that relentless electronic percussion that dominates the whole sound. It's still a great song at it's core. Gemma's talent is still there at it's best, suffocating under the studio gloss. If Gemma re-recorded these songs on a 4-track at home and re-released it I'd buy it in a second. As it stands I don't think I'll be shelling out the cash for this cd.

So to recap, I like tracks 2, 4, 7, 8, 9, and 11. Don't much care for the others. 7/10.