Darren Hanlon - I Will Love You At All

Darren Hanlon's forth solo album sees the artist settle into a cosy, intimate sound. I Will Love You At All, recorded in Portland, Oregon with Adam Selzer (M. Ward, The Decemberists), is an acoustic journey that sees Hanlon hone his skills as an introspective songwriter on perhaps his best produced album to date.

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Darren Hanlon has been a beloved staple of the Australian music scene for the better part of a decade. He's the guy that made the banjo cool a decade before Mumford & Sons with his breakout single "Falling Aeroplanes". He's written songs about the inventor of the bike kickstand, curing hiccups, lamented that there aren't enough songs about the sport of squash, and an ode to his lifestyle of perpetual couch surfing.

But at the same time he's also put his unique perspective and way with words into authoring of some of the most touching ballads this country has seen in recent years, from "A-Z", "I Wish That I Was Beautiful for You" and "Elbows". As the title might suggest, Hanlon's latest release sees him leaning somewhat towards the latter. But don't expect an album of  love-torn sickness; Hanlon himself describes it as his mature album but like always, whimsical poetry and smile-inducing couplets are perhaps the single most identifiable element of I Will Love You At All.

Indeed, the suggestion of maturity perhaps points more to a more introspective approach than any paradigm shift of Hanlon's songwriting. One of the album's standouts, the profound Scenes From A Separation feels incredibly personal, but unlike its bleak Ingmar Bergman film counterpart, Hanlon finds no shortage of delightful imagery and killer couplets in the montage of situations; "Right now I'm watching a drummer / haul his drums into a bar / Deep down I'm secretly happy / that I play the harmonica".

The pièce de résistance, House, clocking in at nearly eight minute evokes a simple tale of revisiting a past home with startling detail. Using a solitary electric guitar backing that is at times almost inaudible, verses of prose are punctuated by heavy instrumental turnarounds. The result is that one of Hanlon's most daring songs to date is also one of his most effective musically; utilising instrumentation to perfectly evoke the appropriate mood. It's only appropriate that the followup to an eight minute song is a jaunty two minute shuffle, If Only My Heart Were Made Of Stone.

It's at this point that I want to start reciting quote after quote of lines from I Will Love You At All. Such is the strength of the songwriting here, I'd be in serious danger of just producing a facsimile of the album's liner notes. This album may well be Hanlon's most overall consistent outing lyrically and musically.

In stark contrast to energetic pop rock sound of Hanlon's previous few albums that has at times obfuscated the simplistic beauty of Hanlon's songs, Hanlon and Selzer together craft a largely acoustic experience in I Will Love You At All. The production style is deliberately uneven; spaces are used haphazardly to add many textures to an otherwise relatively basic array of instruments. This fluidity becomes immediately apparent as the album progresses from the starkly intimate opening track Butterfly Bones to the live-sounding Modern History; it's a shift from a guitar softly strummed on a bed in the dead of the night to a band playing at a the pub without ever leaving the studio. As I Will Love You At All progresses, ukuleles, horns, electric guitars, strings and a cheeky tenor saxophone all make memorable appearances, appropriately flavouring the acoustic qualities of the album.

Well-known for his playful songs, I Will Love You At All sees Darren Hanlon create a truly comfortable personal album without losing what makes him such a special songwriter.