Essex Arms (CD)

Essex Arms is Darren Hayman's finest work to date and tells tales of illicit sex, dog fights, car crashes and love in the English countryside. Darren, of course, is best known as the singer-songwriter of the phenomenally successful and much-loved Hefner. In the latest incarnation of the constantly morphing Secondary Modern he has gathered together a set of musicians with the chops to do justice to his increasingly complex and mature songs; a tight, tough, but soulful folk-rock orchestra reminiscent of a more urban Incredible String Band or an Angli-cized Lambchop. The second in a proposed trilogy of albums about Hayman's home county of Essex, Essex Arms is a conceptual piece about the East Anglian rural underbelly. For Fans Of: Hefner, The Wave Pictures, The Mountain Goats, Lambchop, The Incredible String Band, Fanfarlo, Emmy The Great, Ray Davies.

• Format: CD
• Genre: Rock