Side One / One Side

The Haywards' Side One/One Side starts with the dryly ironic "A Lot of People Fall in Love in the Key of C," a snarky duet for singer/songwriter David Enright and a piano played with a single finger that strongly recalls parts of the Magnetic Fields' similarly meta 69 Love Songs. After that quirky beginning, the album maintains the stripped-down one-man-band feeling (the Haywards are largely a solo project by Enright, with occasional help from various friends) through a variety of styles and moods. For example, "Drool Cup" is a blues for slide guitar, hushed vocals, and a mutated tape-loop rhythm, while the similar "When You Wrung Yourself Out" adds bursts of backwards guitar and what sounds like a toy piano. In between, the much poppier "I Meant Well" returns to the Magnetic Fields comparison, only this time recalling the group's early Phil Spector meets the Young Marble Giants sound. A tinge of wistful melancholy hangs over the album, not least in Enright's often mournful vocal style; this keeps "playful" from being exactly the right word to describe the loose, experimental vibe of the varied arrangements, but the ramshackle, homemade feel of Side One/One Side lightens what might otherwise have been a considerably darker album.