Darren Hayman’s Valentine’s Day Occupation at the Vortex

Keeping occupied: Darren Hayman

Those with feelings of nostalgia for obscure 90s indie bands may smile at the mention of Hefner, a group formed by the Essex-born singer, songwriter and guitarist Darren Hayman. The group officially split in 2002, but Hayman, now 43, is musically as prolific as ever. His latest creative outlet is called Darren Hayman’s Occupation, a series of monthly themed shows at the Vortex comprising songs from his back catalogue. This month the theme is love and love songs.

Will you be playing straight up love songs, or are you planning to give the nights an anti-Valentine’s feel?

I’m going to do it quite genuinely. There are very few really straight love songs that just say I love you unconditionally. I like those type of songs but it’s a bit like cream cakes – you can’t eat too many, can you? Repeating I love you over and over again does not a song make – sometimes there has to be an angle, a detail about the way she’s picking a piece of fluff off her skirt or something. It’s not as simple as a declaration of love, but perhaps the declaration rings hollow if we use it too much.

In your songs how important is romantic love?

Since I’ve been married I tend to write a lot of songs that are about trouble in relationships and relationships dissolving. I do this by having a long memory and by focusing on the small things that go wrong in relationships and making more of them. But because of those sort of songs it’s pretty important that once every couple of years I write a slam dunk, you know, a make-the-wife-cry love song. I think if I didn’t do that I might be in trouble.

Do you find it easier to write about emotions or do you prefer writing about things?

I think I write about conditions of the heart all the time by writing about things. I did an album about lidos few years ago, and my last proper album was about the Essex witch trials and the English Civil War. But all of these things are just vehicles to find another way to say ‘I’m tired of being lonely and I don’t want to die.’ Sometimes I’m thinking about the heart to make a song about a tower block more interesting, or using a tower block to make an affair of the heart more interesting. I go both ways.

Love is often the initial trigger that leads young people to try and write a song. Was that the way with you?

For me writing songs was a diary. I wrote songs for a long time before anyone heard them. It was a way of recording thoughts and remembering how I felt about something. It doesn’t have to be love, it could just have easily been anger. When you’re really young you’re a brat and everything seems unfair. A lot of my early songs were saying ‘why me – why is this happening to me?’ Then you grow up a bit and realise it’s happening to everyone.

Darren Hayman’s Occupation is on 13-14 February at the Vortex Jazz Club, 11 Gillett Square, N16 8AZ. Support will come from Pete Astor and Louis Philippe.