Hayden is a guy who can barely get up in the morning: The first sound on Everything I Long For, the Canadian sensation's debut album, is a cough from a throat heavy with nocturnal phlegm. The genre is expressive singer/songwriter, alternative division, and Hayden emotes his way through a dreamscape of slightly surreal but closely observed human minutiae in songs filled only with his raspy, lugubrious voice, a lonely piano or acoustic guitar and a narcoleptic atmosphere. Much of the album is so soft it takes awhile to notice the few rockers, particularly "In September," whose slinky guitars smart like whips. The album sounds potentially unpleasant, and it occasionally is, but on his own terms, Hayden invests his sleepy poetry with some nobility; he'll get out of bed to show how the little things matter. (RS 734)

BILL WYMAN