Hayden makes me feel all fooszshy goozshy inside. He was my first teen crush, the one artist whose every move made my young heart skip a beat. My high school years are inscribed with the marks of this devotion: self-released cassette tape (signed: “David, one day I’ll be a proctologist. Hayden”); limited edition 7“s; albums procured on CD and LP; stories of various sightings at Toys“R“Us; and insistent, never-ending claims that I discovered him before you did. If you grew up in an Ontario suburb in the ’90s, this story may be a very, very familiar one.

But I am too young for this fogey remember-when shit. This is a confession. When cool left Hayden, so did I. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve listened to Elk Lake Serenade front to back, and I admit to being super bored at the latest in a long line of guy-with-guitar Hayden shows I’ve attended. I swore never to see him in concert again. In short, I let the side down.

Imagine my shining gladness that, in spite of my infidelity, Hayden still makes music this good. Typical of his latter-day, up-tempo fare, Where and When combines straightforward guitar and slightly skewed drums with Hayden’s absolutely singular vocals. Not content to be just hooky, he sings pop lines with ballad-caliber fragility and attention to detail. His textured intonation would be breezy if it were easier to ignore. Instead, there’s a depth to his lines that attests—more than any other aspect of his music—to the truth of his tales.

Perhaps I should’ve said “snapshots.” Here all we get is a moment in a story. It’s cheesy if you don’t buy it, but the detailed imagery in lines like, “She got up so close the condensation changed her to a ghost” helps. The modesty of the portrait makes it all the more affecting. This is unpretentious restraint: we don’t need an arced plot, just a piece. That’ll do.

Finished with interlocking horn solos, the song ends all in ramshackle and clamour. It trails off just as the scene does, with the threads coming undone and me wondering where they may have lead. Oh Hayden! Take me back.

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