Clearing

Austin, Texas multimedia artist Hayden Dunham’s first prominent musical incarnation was as the face — but not voice — of QT, a conceptual hyperpop project in collaboration with AG Cook and SOPHIE. It was as arch and fizzy as was generally expected at the time from the PC Music collective - however Dunham’s solo work as Hyd seems to be way more serious, sometimes intensely so. Covering Nick Cave’s “Into my Arms” in 2022 was something of a statement of intent when it came to darkness and songwriting chops, and this album from the end of the same year really follows through. It features production from SOPHIE (completed before her tragically early death), Jónsi, Caroline Polachek, PC Music’s Danny L. Harle and more but feels like an individual, coherent piece of work, shot through with goth bleakness and 80s pop balladry and even a hint Nirvana, with the PC Music deconstructed futurism still present but sublimated into the eerie moods.