After Hefner broke up, Darren Haymen did a lot of forgetable things. But now he's back - sharp, witty and charming as ever. It’s probably because he is kinda doing Hefner songs again.

Let me start off with an off-topic explanation – I know that lately we haven’t been updating the music blog as much as we used to. I’m sorry about that. But let me assure you that soon enough we will be right back on track! What can we say? 8hands is growing, and you can expect a lot of surprises from us in the near future – site wise and app wise. Things will just get better round here! Now, let’s start talking about da man, Darren Hayman.

Most of you will probably know Darren Hayman from the astonishing work that he did while he was the lead singer of Hefner. If you ever heard anything by Hefner, you probably fell in love with Hayman’s endless geeky charm, his perfect voice, and of course, his way with words. He had this magical ability to deliver purely cynical thoughts, without a trace of anger or bitterness.

But not everything about Hefner was perfect. They had three brilliant pop-folk-rock studio albums and a ton of b-sides before they have decided, like the rest of the world in those 2001 days, to try their luck with synths and electronics. They brought us ‘Dead Media’ – one hell of a boring album, and probably the cause of the Hefner’s threesome going their separate and unknown ways. The only one I’ve tried to follow was Darren Hayman.

At first he went to a project called The French – another electronic outfit, which released a decent album, but didn’t leave any real marker except from that one “Wu-Tang Clan” song (can’t find it to put it here legally for ya, but look for it or buy it. It’s an amzing song). Sadly, it kinda went down the hill from there.

Hayman started to put out lots of solo releases: eps, 7 inches, even an album – alone, all by himself, recorded at home without a backing band. That’s when I got it! Apparently, Hayman isn’t the bedroom-singer-songwriter we thought he was. When he was alone, the songs didn’t sound right, too much was missing. Around the beginning of 2006, I’d lost hope and stopped trying. I thought to myself, “We will always have Hefner”, and popped ‘The Fidelity Wars’ in the stereo. Only god knows what made me google Hayman’s name a few weeks ago.

I found out that by the end of 2007, Hayman released a new album, with a band! The band's name is Darren Hayman and the Secondary Modern and the album’s title is just the same. And how is the music? Awesome! Haymen is back to guitars, back to what he does best, back to… doing Hefner!

I mean… I love electronics, and I appreciate it when musicians try out new stuff. I really do. But when it comes to Hayman, I just want him to deliver those great lyrics over some beautiful catchy and melodically soft rockn’roll, and that is exactly what happens in Darren Hayman and the Secondary Modern. So, if you ever had a soft place in your heart for Hefner (and I assume you did, after all, you are not robots!) you will love this new album. Just trust me on this one.