Hymns for Socialists

Darren is playing Chants for Socialists in full for the first time at St Pancras Old Church on 23rd April

the magnificent Emma Kupa is supporting

and you can get tickets here

new Chants shows

we've got three new shows coming up, they are pretty special, extremely intimate, and in William Morris's houses!

getting tickets is pretty old school, here are the details

Saturday 7th Feb, from 2:15
William Morris Society & Museum, Kelmscott House, 26 Upper Mall, Hammersmith, W6 9TA

Setting Morris’s Lyrics to New Music

Darren will sing the songs acoustically, talk briefly and hold a Q&A session.

• Tickets: members, £6; non-members, £8; students £4

Applications for tickets should be sent to the WMS office (address above)
Stamped addressed envelopes should accompany all postal bookings.

The pre-booking of tickets for all events is strongly advised. Our historic Coach House lecture room has limited seating capacity and if you attend without booking beforehand you risk being turned away.


Thursday 19th and Friday 20th March, from 7:30
William Morris Gallery, Lloyd Park, Forest Road, Walthamstow, London, E17 4PP

Darren Hayman performs Chants for Socialists

•  Advance tickets only £12

tickets will go on sale at the Gallery tomorrow (28th Jan) morning at 10am, either in person or over the phone (020 8496 4390)

Union Chapel show

i'm sure a ton of photos will be cropping up from the amazing Union Chapel on Saturday, here's a start, taken during soundcheck (there were 658 people in there for the show)

Chants for Socialists launch show #1

on Saturday 24th Jan we're launching the Chants For Socialists LP with a free Daylight Music show at the Union Chapel in London

doors are at midday, so get there good and early, and bring some cash for a donation towards the running of the show, oh, and of course some to get your copy of the LP or CD

we're thrilled that The Catenary Wires and the Papas and the Mamas are also playing:

The Mamas are Sarah Cracknell and Debsey Wykes. The Papas are Martin and Paul Kelly. Two sets of parents playing more than the songs of The Mamas & The Papas, acoustically. You know them as, variously, members of Saint Etienne, Dolly Mixture and East Village. This is their debut gig as The Papas & The Mamas. We are, understandably, very excited.

The Catenary Wires were formed in 2014 when Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey (Talulah Gosh, Heavenly, Tender Trap) moved out of London. They started playing songs on their daughter's 3/4 size acoustic guitar, and are still refusing to give it back. They function as a simple two-piece, but will often feature guest musicians when playing live. Their first ever show was on 3 May 2014 at the Arnolfini in Bristol. Their songs are quiet and (mostly) sad. They will start recording an LP in 2015.

UNMISSABLE!

Darren Hayman – a playful flounce through an indie hero’s solo canon

the Guardian reviewed last night's show at the Lexington (and mentioned Chants again!)

After releasing 10 solo albums following the split of urban-folk legends Hefner, cult indie hero Darren Hayman can pretty much do as he pleases. At times this involves simply chanting “old man, stupid old man!” during a fiddly instrumental changeover. At others, it means indulging in that archetypal indie pastime, the concept project.

Since 2009, Hayman has released a trilogy of albums about his home county of Essex, cataloguing its suburban squalor, history of witch trials and notable dogging sites. He made an album of instrumentals about UK lidos in 2012, and his forthcoming album, Chants for Socialists, is a “lament for lost hope” based on the 19th-century protest poetry of William Morris. “But I’m not playing any of that on party night,” Hayman chuckles. Instead he marks his label Fortuna Pop!’s annual Winter Sprinter showcase with a playful flounce through a solo canon full of awkward trysts in soulless satellite towns.

Clad in fishing cap and scarf, Hayman and the fiddlers, egg-shakers and squeeze-boxers of the Long Parliament resemble a beachcombing folk band wracked with knowing indiepop self-deprecation. He beats his forehead while berating himself for punching above his romantic weight on the stark lullaby Out of My League, and he likens putting reverb on his wobbly, pubescent warble to “putting a dogshit on a velvet pillow”, well aware that his frail voice gives these pained paeans their vulnerable, everyman elegance. After a cranky early cover of Prince’s Raspberry Beret, he says: “Follow that? I can’t”, though he knows he can. Strident alt-pop jigs Pram Town, Calling Out Your Name Again and Big Fish are affectionate tributes to the inescapable mundanity of Harlow, the languid Taught You How to Dance is bathed in tongue-in-cheek mirrorball and Nothing You Can Do About It spells out its ennui on a Scrabble board for added bookworm charm. Only the fuzz-pop freak-out finale of Hefner’s Pull Yourself Together, with Hayman windmilling like a mobile library Pete Townshend, could count as crowd-pleasing, but it is a pleasure to entertain Hayman’s homegrown indulgences.

a preview of Darren's January shows in the Guardian!