LIAM Hayes may be one of the most uncompromising musicians of the past 30 years. Not that his sumptuous music is in any way difficult – the word he most often uses to describe it is “pop”, albeit in the 1970s AM radio sense – but his refusal to cede even a scintilla of creative control has forced him to operate largely outside the record label system, forfeiting any sense of career momentum. His output has been intermittent, and not all of his albums are currently available, a state of affairs that clearly pains him. And yet he wouldn’t change a thing. “For me, it all comes back to the songs,” he says – meaning that they’re ultimately more important than the personal sacrifices he’s made trying to get them to you.
And what terrific songs, from the breathtaking cycle-of-life swoop of 1994 debut single “Found A Little Baby” to 2018’s “Here In Hell”, which rages elegantly against a world controlled by Big Tech. Hayes has always been a man out of time, but his refusal to submit to the vanities and venalities of modern life becomes nobler by the year.
Fresh from walking his dog Guinevere along the shores of Lake Michigan, Hayes reveals that his new album is “80 per cent finished” and he hopes to release it before the end of 2024. But as we’ll discover, nothing in Plushland is ever quite that simple. He sighs deeply before taking us back to where it all began. “OK, let’s roll around in some broken glass…”
PLUSH
“THREE-QUARTERS BLIND EYES”/“FOUND A LITTLE BABY”
DRAG CITY/DOMINO, 1994
The ravishing debut single reveals a new Brian Wilson lurking on the fringes
