Shaina Hayes – ‘Kindergarten Heart’ album review: a nourishing folk jaunt
THE SKINNY: It’s difficult to get the knowledge of Canadian Shaina Hayes‘ career as an agricultural scientist and farmer and fall into a heap of metaphors for her most recent album, Kindergarten Heart. That job becomes almost impossible when listening to the down-home, organic and wholly nourishing record.
It should be noted that if you are arriving at Hayes’ album, put to tape while she nurtured her CSA farm during the lockdown and the years that followed, and expecting anything other than indie-adjacent folk, you will be disappointed. That’s not to say the LP has ten songs that feel exactly the same; in fact, part of the appeal is the unique textures found within the liminal spaces of our expectations. However, Hayes is clearly an authentic artist who has stayed true to her sound and avoided the apparently necessary modern inclination of continually breaching new genres in an intense desire to escape categorisation.
It is within the wonderful moments of fingers dragging across the strings and lyrics that require repeat listens before they land that the beauty of Hayes as a recording artist arrives. While it’s certain that she would enjoy the LP gaining popularity and making her a musician known around the world, one suspects that if that were to happen, she would still retire to her farm and make music in the exact same way. Easy similarities within the folk world can be drawn, but it is Hayes’ idiosyncratic style that she really shines.
There are morning glimpses of sunshine, the cold dew that grazes your ankles as you walk through the fields, the dirt under your nails and the sustainable bounty all the elements can provide neatly encapsulated within one LP. While music is often best shared, this is an LP that benefits from isolation and the proper space needed to digest it.
For fans of: Smiling to yourself as the music plays.
A concluding comment from my butcher: She’s a farmer? Most farmers I know can only burp in tune.
Kindergarten Heart track by track:
‘Early Riser’: There’s happiness in the song title, which provides you with the right amount of information before you press play on a song. ‘Early Riser’ is both as warm and joyful as the morning sun and as delicate as the footsteps we all try to have while venturing into the kitchen to make the first tea of the day. [3/5]
‘Kindergarten Heart’: The title track of the album begins with equally gentle strings before Hayes’ vocals propel things forward. A comforting tone ensues as the chugging rhythm brings you into Hayes’ world once and for all. [3/5]
‘Fun’: Another impressive case of correct titling is only the smallest part of this song. A bouncing tune that could feel at home in the quaint indie of the 2000s, Hayes pushes the pedal on her go-kart and begins to accelerate. [3/5]
‘Sidewalk’: Country-adjacent folk has a habit of bringing a smile to the faces of all who listen. Regardless of your penchant for pop music or dedication to hard rock, there’s a comfort to scything lyrics delivered with an acoustic smile. ‘Sidewalk’ delivers it in spades. [3.5/5]
‘New Favourite’: The sound of fingers dragging across the strings is a sound too often taken out of recordings. But it provides the necessary background texture for folk music, and Hayes does a similar job here, providing a textural heft to a traditional acoustic number before it raises itself to the skies. [3/5]
‘A Thousand Perfect Words’: Lyrically, this is Hayes’ best number. A gentle guitar provides the backing as her words take centre stage. A sweet lullaby that plays for too short a time but could linger on if given the correct setting of a slow dance. [4/5]
‘Heat Wave’: Feeling more like a cool breeze than a ‘Heat Wave’, there’s a good chance this song could act as a salve for those sunburnt memories. Vocally, Hayes stretches herself and still delivers something that feels both ethereal and universal. [3/5]
‘Sun and Time’: A darker turn occurs with ‘Sun and Time’. Hayes brings a little more melancholy to his one. It still has the characteristics of Kindergarten Heart and is neatly summed up as “a chamomile kind of heat”. [3.5/5]
‘Fool Forlorn’: One of Hayes’ more barbed tracks, wretched as it is with face-palmed love. But there’s still something incredibly sweet about the twanging production and the track’s melting sentiment.
‘Mastery’: Closing out a folk album is always difficult to do. Being so neatly categorised usually means you’re stuck with a somewhat lacklustre finale. However, Hayes uses ‘Mastery’ as a powerful punctuation mark. It rises out of the comfort of her vocals into something far grander, signifying the end of the LP but the start of something brilliant. [4/5]
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