The Closer I Get is the second full-length release from Toronto-area musician Hayden Desser, following his debut full-length album Everything I Long For and the Moving Careful EP. It was released on May 12, 1998, on Outpost Records, a division of Geffen. It runs for a total length of forty-five minutes and seven seconds.

This album was Hayden's first international release; it also saw a significant stylistic shift from the haunting and profoundly melancholy lo-fi four-track folk of Everything I Long For to a more rock-oriented feel backed in many places by a full band. That said, Hayden has not forgotten his roots entirely; at several points shines through the gentle acoustic strumming with desolate harmonica overtop that originally won him critical acclaim and a modest but dedicated nationwide fan base.

Of course, said fan base was quick to lambaste their hero for straying from his established and much-loved formula of growled vocals overtop of a single acoustic guitar and harmonica. Persistent percussion and mellotron replaced the strumming; to straight solo acoustic guitar were added banjo and mandolin, layered together with more complex recording apparatus than the simple basement four-track heard in earlier recordings. Presumably as a result of the negative response, Hayden disappeared from the music scene shortly after its release, rarely seen outside his hometown of Thornhill, Ontario, and didn't resurface until 2001.

It's well worth ignoring the nay-sayers altogether. This album has no real weak points.

1. The Closer I Get (3:45)

The album opens with a gentle electric guitar hook and quiet but persuasive percussion that draw you in to the slow pace of the title track. Its tone is pessimistic, but somehow upbeat in spite of it: "When he said times were changing I thought he meant times were changing for the better, but they weren't. The truth is in the details first, and the writing's on the wall; and the closer I get to being strong, the less to go wrong."

2. Stride (2:46)

A snapshot of the optimism at the beginning of a relationship that looks like it's going to work out successfully for all parties involved. Its feel is similar to that of the opening track, only more upbeat both in pace and in lyric: "You and I we take it all in stride, you and I rely on little things to get by." The instrumentation becomes more expansive, widening to encompass synthesised squeaks and ending on a syncopated saxophone run to lead into the next track.

3. The Hazards of Sitting Beneath Palm Trees (2:43)

This is first song that really deviates from Hayden's established folksy style. Growly electric guitar effects layered atop vaguely Hawaiian-sounding percussion and vocals recorded on several tracks create a feel reminiscent of trip-hop (think Portishead's Dummy). It's also a considerably more cynical song than any of the others: "The men arrive with their one-track minds, and you like that they're there when they ask you the time; and they say what they do and they'll do what you say and they'll tell you some lies if you let them stay."

4. Bullet (5:09)

Listening to this album for the first time, "Bullet" is one of those tracks that force you to stop, go back, and listen again. Standing out in sharp relief from the whimsical trip-hop stylings of "The Hazards of Sitting Beneath Palm Trees", "Bullet" is almost chillingly raw. The quiet acoustic guitar accompaniment to whispered and growled vocals hails back to "When This Is Over", from Everything I Long For. The harmonica that insinuates itself into the mix midway through sounds desperate and unimaginably lonely. It has few words, most of them repeating; here is shown Hayden's mastery of taking a single feeling and amplifying it, making damned sure that you're feeling it too. "I found a bullet outside my door; I think it's me it was intended for. It makes sense to forget what it takes."

5. Waiting for a Chance to See Her (2:39)

Another somewhat bizarre track, this one entirely instrumental. A repeating riff that reminds me oddly of soundtracks to old spy films segues into a mellotron segment that sounds like something out of a video game, which in turn evolves further, ending with cello. It sounds incongruous -- and it is -- but it serves as a near-perfect buffer between two more serious tracks.

6. Two Doors (5:14)

Appalachian-style banjo, pedal steel guitar, and beautiful vocal harmony make for inordinately cheerful-sounding music. Strange, then, when the words to which it is set don't quite match: "I saw you in line when you checked in, I thought that you smiled but I'm uncertain. I know all the lines, but they don't work for me; so I just turned away, and let it be." It exemplifies Hayden's talent for storytelling, as well as the wry self-effacement that characterised Everything I Long For.

7. Between Us to Hold (2:06)

Almost unquestionably the single most effective track on this album, and one of Hayden's best songs, period. It is the least processed song on this album, with only a single acoustic guitar and a single vocal track. It is astonishingly honest, and the quiet fingerpicked accompaniment gels perfectly with another lyric story: "I taught you to play guitar last night. We'd been sick for days, and we were stuck inside. I held your arm as you hit the strings, I pressed your fingers down, and started to sing." Like "Bullet", this is a song that sends chills down your spine and needs to be heard again to be fully appreciated.

8. Better Off Inside (3:02)

More honesty, but this time in the guise of self-righteous anger: "In your eyes I see you in disguise, you're talking backwards, telling lies". In accordance with this sentiment, it features hard-hitting electric guitar on the chorus and a faster, more decisive tempo, though the issues it addresses are far from upbeat.

9. Instrumental with Mellotron (2:20)

Most appropriately titled, it does what it says on the tin.

10. Memphis (3:37)

Another story song, this one about the suicide of someone famous and the empty, helpless feelings of those friends and admirers left behind. "How do you protect a 42 year old man from himself?"

11. Nights Like These (2:48)

A vignette about loneliness, again, in under three minutes. Songs like this are comparable to flash fiction; all the extra words and red herring emotions are removed, and only the most crucial parts remain once the work has been boiled down to its essence. "I told you the day before last, something tells me this is the best things will get and I'll be left with dreams I had but never kept." It's something that everyone has felt, here rendered as a slow and melancholy piano song with a hauntingly evanescent cello and quiet vocal harmony that fades out before you realise that it was there.

12. You Are All I Have (5:17)

This track is the best example of Hayden's newfound maturity. Rather than the ennui nightmares of Everything I Long For, rife with forced rhyme, it shows a feeling brought to its purest form: it replaces tales of breakfasts at cheap diners and calling in sick for work to spend a rainy day with a lover with the simple but honest "You are all I have".

13. I'll Tell Him Tonight (3:41)

The album ends on a worried note, again a universality. In another story, Hayden relates the sick feeling of having someone you love suddenly disappear, however temporarily, and realising that you haven't told them that you loved them. Strangely, this song falls flat as a stand-alone; as a closing track, however, it functions as an effective prompt to flip back to the beginning and listen again from start through to finish.

Sources:
http://www.allmusic.com
Lyrics taken from The Closer I Get and copyright Hayden Desser, 1998.