The Tension and The Spark

With a bit of a void in quality new music to listen to I've been going back and rediscovering older CDs, most recently Darren Hayes' (ex-Savage Garden) remarkble second solo album `The Tension and the Spark'. It's raw and honest and vulnerable and it just grabs me. It's actually the second time I've rediscovered it and it always grows more on me.
(Just as an aside, while I'm writing this an absolute classic - Foreigner's `I Want To Know What Love Is' is playing on my computer, my list tells me it's my 8th favourite song of all time)
Anyway, back to the topic at hand.
The CD opens with `Darkness' which wasn't a hit here and barely made the top 40 but it haunts me.
`It doesn't really matter where it all began, all I know I got covered in darkness'
Track 3 by contrast is called `Light' and is amazingly uplifting.
`I have changed I have become, I am flame I am the sun, I'm the reflection of you'
The fifth song `Dublin Sky' is nostalgic and heartbreaking.
`I've been down a lonely street tonight and I don't know what's wrong with me'
By track 7 we're getting pretty deep on `Unlovable' and it's hard not to relate to it at times.
`Am I so unlovable, is my skin untouchable, do I remind you of a part of you that you don't like'
I ask myself sometimes why I listen to such music. I like music to affect me whether it's positively or negatively. Obviously positive is preferred but it's my experience that every cloud doesn't have a silver lining. This is a great CD that was never going to be commercially successful because it's too honest and too deep for the punters out there.