This came out in 2001 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Hayden Desser isn’t always the most dynamic performer around — or the most prolific.
We’ve been waiting three years for the low-key Toronto troubadour to follow up his last CD The Closer I Get. It could easily have been longer; the initial run of this home-recorded disc was limited to 100 copies and packaged by Hayden himself. Fortunately, he’s letting mass-production take over the manufacturing these days. But the personal touch continues to define his music. The 11-song Skyscraper National Park is another hushed and spare set of beautiful bittersweet ballads and late-night lo-fi rockers, with Hayden acting as one-man band a la Beck or Palace’s Will Oldham. Sleepily strumming his acoustic guitar, tapping out rudimentary drumbeats and basslines, Hayden ruminates on love, nature — and the heartbreaking beauty and loneliness of both — in a croaking, fragile falsetto. Think of it as Hayden in his natural habitat.
