Hayden “Barely Friends”
Perfectly capturing the wintry gloom that lurks around the calendar corner in it’s wistful, alt-country melancholy, Canadian singer-songwriter Hayden‘s somber “Barely Friends” rides atop an endless roll of down-home twang, it’s steady strums and touches of harmonica and distant pedal-steel serving an effective backdrop to his internal rue.
What’s suddenly got the guy in such a miserable state of mind that he can barely utter lyrics above a shameful mumble? The sighting of a former flame the week before, which instantly shot wince-inducing memories of how their union went awry back to the surface. “The truth is you just weren’t the one”, he can admit…now. But way back when, he could only muster up a series of weak lies as explanation for why they couldn’t be; in the end, he now realizes, probably hurting her far more than if he had just confessed to her the real reason he was breaking things off in the first place.
Overwhelmed with wanting to right the past wrong (both to mend a heart he left torn and assuage his own guilty conscience), Hayden ponders over whether he should have just walked up to her and informed her of the long-held truth when he happened upon her that night, perhaps opening conversation up by oh-so-”smoothly” fibbing about how fetching she looked when fixed against the star-lit skies before dishing out a lengthy apology concerning the way he dismissed her all that time ago. Alas he didn’t, and that decision now has him facing an entire future overcast with an even weightier sense of regret.
A beautiful slice of intimate, folk-baked songcraft, “Barely Friends” proves that sometimes it’s the heartbreak-ER that can ultimately end up the bigger loser.
From Hayden’s latest album, In Field & Town.
DL: “Barely Friends” (alt)
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