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The Roads Don't Love You - Gemma Hayes


Year Released: 2006

Label: Source

Year Bought: 2006

On the TV show 'Lost', there's a notion that the way to stop your brain from haemorrhaging because of time travel is to locate a 'constant' - someone in your life that you can go to at any point on your travels that will essentially ground your mind and enable you to get a grasp on reality.

Weirdly, Gemma Hayes is the musical equivalent of mine. I always seem to get her album or see her live at a transitional period of my life, and I always go back to her when I need to be grounded.

'The Roads Don't Love You' is her second album, following her from her Mercury Prize-nominated debut 'Night On My Side'.

Released in 2005, the record is more radio-friendly than her debut, not that that meant her tunes got any air time. For some reason, she's always been an underground artist with a cult following, despite having a beautiful voice, great songs and a very marketable image. (Apparently Louis Walsh once told her he could make her a star if she dated celebrities and let other people write her songs - thank god she said no.)

'The Roads Don't Love' is an acoustic rock album, and will be too gentle for some, but there are plenty of gorgeous melody lines in here. The chorus of 'Another For The Darkness' slips and slides around beautifully, while 'Something In My Way' has a great energy to it.

I listened to this album a lot while at university, so going back to it now was a real treat. Acoustic ballad 'Easy On The Eye' is still in regular rotation for me, but I had forgotten how much I loved a lot of the other tunes.

Lyrically, it's all very self-reflective, but I really connected with it at the time. 

Some of my favourites: 

You say you're unraveling

I haven't got the heart to watch you crying

One for the road and another for the darkness

I'll get you home and tomorrow you'll forget this

And...

Palest skin I throw

Myself in

Count me as your friend

You don't scare me

Man you got to know

I'll be here tomorrow

And...

Gotta meet you face to face

Convince you that I’m not so strange

Just happy sad

I’m broken down

But I’m upbeat when you come around

Listening back now, the album does feel a bit long. The piano ballad 'Helen' sucks a lot of energy out of it. The songs are great but the production isn't as good as on her first album. But I love it. I loved it then and I love it now.

If anything happens, Gemma Hayes will be my constant.

7/10

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