Its cover is innocuous enough. Plain brown cardboard that flips open, a refreshing change from easily-destroyed plastic jewel cases, with a picture of a moose in darker red-brown centred on the front. A grizzly bear done similarly on the back, with track numbers and titles written on either side in a rather uncertain hand, as though they're pencilled in indecisively pending a better idea. "Hayden - - - Skyscraper National Park" it says at the top, and that's all.

Easily swayed by pretty, unusual, or cardboard packaging (also by glowing recommendations from a friend in whose musical tastes I trust implicitly), I bought it.

Skyscraper National Park is the third full-length album from Toronto lo-fi folkie Paul Hayden Desser, following Everything I Long For and The Closer I Get. It was released in 2001 on Hardwood Records, distributed by Universal Music; for Hayden, this sees a return to his independent roots after the mainstream-label release of The Closer I Get.

Before its wider commercial release, two limited editions of the album were pressed and sold in extremely small quantities with alternate packaging.

Arguably his best album, or at least the most consistently good of the three LPs, Skyscraper National Park relies less on the growls and snarled anger of Everything I Long For and the mellotron stylings of The Closer I Get and more on simple falsetto and uncomplicated accompaniments done to near-perfection to create an impression of resignedly content melancholy. It is very much the sort of album that is an excellent excuse to stay in bed until midafternoon when it's raining outside.

The album begins with soft finger squeaks on a fretboard and piano chords on downbeats. "Street Car" is vintage Hayden melancholy on sedatives; soft, almost whispered vocals telling a story of love lost show a maturity seen only rarely on earlier albums. This languidly low-key track segues into what is without doubt one of the strongest tracks on the album, "Dynamite Walls". It clocks in as one of the longest tracks on the album, and it is epic in its almost transcendental perfection. Simple layered guitar elements are joined by rhythmic snare drum and later piano, the whole somehow reminiscent of mountain air and open highway. The vocals recede into the background, as the sheer simplicity of the arrangement leaves the listener almost breathless at its conclusion. It's the sort of song that makes you feel like you've done something meaningful and reached a new understanding of the world just by listening.

Somehow the inordinate strength of the opening tracks doesn't overshadow the rest of the album. At times reminding the listener of the likes of Tom Waits and at others sounding like Neil Young less an octave, and backed by consistently stellar instrumentalists (featuring Bob Egan on pedal steel guitar), the album leaps from lo-fi folk-rock to country-influenced to unexpectedly funky and back again without pause for a breather in between. And somehow, the eclecticism works perfectly.

Tracklist

1. Street Car 2. Dynamite Walls 3. Steps Into Miles 4. I Should Have Been Watching You 5. Long Way Down 6. Tea Pad 7. All In One Move 8. Bass Song 9. Carried Away 10. Looking for You in Me 11. Lullaby

Source: http://www.hardwoodrecords.com