Classic Album Review : Hefner - We Love The City (Reissue)
- Written by Andrew Seaton
Nine years after its original release and after a good ol' lawsuit which saw Darren Hayman win back the rights to all his songs from Hefner's label, Too Pure, We Love The City gets a reissue complete with an extra CD crammed full of demos and b-sides.
We Love The City was seen at the time as a bit of a change in style for the band as the album features a wider breadth of instrumentation and an evidently growing electronic influence; this being continued in the subsequent album. Nonetheless We Love The City is classic Hefner, complete with chirpy melodies stringing along to Hayman's lyrics which are typically Thames-Arty in their observations of modern urban life. The opening gambit being, "This is London/Not Antarctica/So why can't the tubes run all night?" - one doubts they do actually love the city after all. Hayman also always brilliantly sounds like he is the medium for the stream of consciousness of an angst-ridden sixteen year old and this is a dominant feature of his song writing, a perfect example of this is in the song 'Painting and Kissing', "I'm in love with Linda/I think she understands me/She's down in the dumps/She lives on Holloway Road." Lines like these are obviously things most people can relate to and the heart-on-sleeve honesty are part of the reason that Hefner have built up such a small but undeniably loyal fanbase.
It's not all about the melancholy explorations of the young heart however by any means. There's fun to be had in this album. For the lefties out there 'The Day That Thatcher Dies' is a great example of sing along working class British indie rock seen in other bands such as The Wedding Present or recently with British Sea Power or the Broken Family Band. Trumpets blare throughout and it's hard not to laugh at the chorus at the end sang by schoolchildren "Ding dong, the witch is dead, which old witch? The wicked witch." If you do like a bit of Thatch it may be best to skip this one, though... or maybe just lighten up?
The extras are worth a go too. The b-sides are great for those latecomers who otherwise wouldn't have access to these tracks; they are often of a good enough quality that they have been wheeled out by Hayman in his recent solo performances. 'I Will Make Her Love Me' being the best of the bunch for us. The remixes are good fun and put an interesting, and often electronic, slant on familiar songs such as 'Greedy Ugly People'.
This reissue of We Love The City is a welcome one as the album is one that holds a place in many twenty-something's hearts and does more that justify the late John Peel's love of the band. It also obviously provides newcomers the perfect introduction to Hefner with what is arguably their most accessible album.
Give it another spin and you too will learn to hate the city once again.