Hayman Kupa Band - The Hayman Kupa Band

by Benjamin Howarth

published: 20 / 9 / 2017

Label: Fika Records
Format: CD

Back to basics yet vibrant and successful collaboration between two of the indie scene’s favourite songwriters, Darren Hayman and Emma Kupa

Review

When I first began buying records more than twenty years ago, nothing was more likely to make me avoid a particular record than that most dreaded of phrases, “side project”. It screamed self-indulgence and not really trying. The kind of record you’d never play more than once, where the legend ‘£16.99’, which you’d only half managed to peel off, taunted your foolishness for not buying a ‘proper’ album instead. Those days have long gone, not least because the kind of record shops that didn’t bother with shrink-wrap have long gone bust. In turn, the idea that someone can reasonably claim to be a “full-time” musician while only releasing a new set of songs every couple of years has long crumbled in the face of economic reality (even Coldplay manage one a year these days…) And so, this collaboration between Darren Hayman (still best known as a favourite of John Peel) and Emma Kupa (too young to have been played on John Peel, but exactly the kind of person he would have liked) will be one of several each songwriter releases this year. But in no way should that be taken to mean that this record shouldn’t be taken seriously. This collaboration has been long in the making (in fact, they recorded it two years ago and have only now found the time to promote its release), but was recorded quickly with minimal fuss. The songs were written eyeball-to-eyeball and then recorded in a quickfire three-day session by the Kentish seaside. With his ongoing ‘Thankful Villages’ project, Hayman’s songwriting has become just one part of a wider endeavour (pictures and videos as important a part of the final outcome as the music). Here, he returns to his roots, a clattering indie sound with brittle guitars and rasping vocals. While very much not a return to the sound of his first band Hefner, this does remind me a lot of his second solo record (the underrated and now out-of-print 'Secondary Modern' album). Through the record, Hayman and Kupa trade lines and share harmonies. While the lyrics take you through the many phases of domesticated relationships (nestbuilding, breaking up, squabbling over when to leave a party – that kind of thing), though the band stress that you shouldn’t read too much into who sings what, as the person who wrote the line isn’t necessarily the person who sang it. Neither Hayman or Kupa are, to put it kindly, classically trained singers, but their voices work well together and the record moves forward with urgency. Much credit for that goes to bassist Michael Wood and drummer Cat Loye, whose names aren’t on the posters, but appear to be as important to the band as the songwriting duo. In between making and releasing this record, Hayman and Kupa have separately written, recorded and release five more albums between them, with more on the way. So, whether this will end up as a one-off or the start of a series remains to be seen. I hope they do more, though, as this is a vibrant and thoroughly enjoyable record.

Track Listing:-

1 Let's Do Nothing
2 No More Bombs
3 Red Petal
4 Over's Now Overdue
5 We Can Get By
6 Do You Know
7 A Tent of Blankets
8 Draw the Line
9 My Right Arm
10 Pretty Waste of Time
11 Reach Out
12 Then We Kissed