Best Songs Of 2010 #7

Darren Hanlon – All These Things

“There’s a hymn, with a hand on the heart.”

He walks a fine line, Darren Hanlon. He consistently comes dangerously close to making sickly sweet music, but yet somehow he is so sincere in everything that he does that he never crosses that line, always managing to strike the balance between sincere and sweet perfectly.

And this is exactly what he did with his 2010 record ‘All These Things’, which even received a (perhaps surprisingly) very positive review from none other than Pitchfork. This title track in the hands of someone else would come off as cliched and annoying, but Darren pulls it off with such endearing ease that it is impossible not to like this song.

I first heard it live last year, when I saw a Darren headline show and he descended into the crowd to play this acoustically, without microphones. It was a beautiful rendition of the song, and I was disappointed to learn that it had never been recorded in studio form, despite Darren playing it live extensively.

This is why I was so excited to hear that this was the first single from Darren’s new album, and even more excited to see that the song loses none of its charm in studio form. I’m undecided on the video clip as a whole, but there is no denying that it is very cute, and also no denying that the song itself is simply sublime.