**1/2 Hayden

THE CLOSER I GET

(Outpost)

Neil Young and Kurt Cobain may have demonstrated deeper skills for communicating their psychic turmoil from the get-go than this 24-year-old, but the promise of Hayden's 1996 folk-grunge debut was that you had to pull After the Gold Rush and MTV Unplugged in New York off the shelf in order to be sure. Now, after hooking up with a full-fledged rock band and several major producers, our Canadian upstart deflates that promise in ways both good and bad. The good is a series of gently depressive rockers that are looser and sweeter than anything off his debut, with open-ended lyrics, swinging rhythms, and warm, tempered vocals (no more Moses-from-the-Mountaintop roar, thank Yahweh). In between, he settles down into a comfortable rut, mulling over lost loves and other interpersonal plights with the same small bag of tricks that tender-hearted young people feel the need to share at coffeehouses from Cambridge to Berkeley.

-- Franklin Soults