- Once called “the love that dare not speak its name”, in the late 1970s it was somewhat wittily (even if it was meant derisively) called “the love that won’t shut up”. From the first brick, allegedly thrown by trans woman of colour, Marsha P Johnson, to the coming forty-fifth anniversary of the Sydney Lesbian and Gay Mardi Gras, visibility for the diverse in gender and rainbow community is as high as it ever has been and actors, artists, writers and musicians are proudly standing out, living their truth and living authentically, no matter how many bigots it upsets and causes small pockets of chagrin. Darren Hayes once the almost asexual but camp appearing lead singer of Savage Garden came out several years ago, acknowledging he always knew he was gay, even if he feared uttering those words and claiming that orientation for himself, growing up as he did in the lower-socio-economic badlands on Brisbane’s southern metropolitan sprawl during the late 1980s and early '90s.

His latest solo album is definitely “queer” – the title is a form of catharsis, a claiming of the name that he dare not speak as a teenager and young adult male pop star. It is also a vibrant “up yours” to the tedious record label A&R men (as they are usually always male – cisgender and heteronormative) who either cautiously advised him not to be so “blatant” or were snickering behind their hands during Savage Garden’s heyday at the perceived “gayness” of Hayes – a way to be derogatory and superior to someone who was lining their pockets with real gold.

Hayes hasn’t released a full, solo album in a decade – partly because of the industry’s reluctance to deal with a former pop-star turned outspoken homosexual (you’d think they would have gotten over that thanks to George Michael and Andy Bell of Erasure, not to mention four-fifths of Scissor Sisters). If there ever is an album release that is a testament to all the emotion, all the feeling of wanting to be “authentically real” and relish using the God-given pop talent that Hayes clearly has, then this album is it. From the get-go this is an album that represents every sinew of Hayes’ being – he composed, produced, arranged and played nearly every instrument on the album. Many of the tracks are “super-sized” (Hey Matt is, by itself, a whopping nine minutes and nineteen seconds) and the album opener Let’s Try Being In Love was also the first release from the album and the accompanying video is cinematic in scope that engages every one of the senses (and a few you might not have known you have). It sets out the manifesto with the middle eight, unpacking all the thoughts and feeling young Darren of Logan had attempting to understand these so-called “unnatural” desires flooding through his body, with a rhythm track that Madonna would kill for (it resembles much of what her classic 2006 album Confessions on a Dance Floor was built on).

The album doesn’t stop after that sensory wake-up, Do You Remember? is Prince like in its swagger and sass, with Hayes ripping up and down the octaves, effortlessly going from below middle C right up to a falsetto that just keeps climbing without sounding strained at all. Lyrically, Hayes is not backward in coming forward, it essays the experiences with his first boyfriend (more coyly explored in code on Savage Garden’s Chained To You) now here it is as honest and at times confronting, exactly the way Prince could deliver a lyric about sex while charming your ears and moving your hips and feet at the same time.

Without this review evolving into a track-by-track analysis, the rest of Homosexual covers nearly every base musically that a well-crafted album that is both a ridding of the years of accumulated shame and the celebration of those “lost years” when Hayes could have been a wildly successful out and proud pop prince, like Troye Sivan, Olly Alexander (Years and Years) or Meanjin/Brisbane’s Tim Nelson and his husband Sam Netterfield of Cub Sport have been, over the last decade. It is a richly rewarding listen – it’s not an album of somewhat pretty little pop songs (not that that would be a “bad” thing as such) – this is an album of pride in being of who you really are without compromise and Hayes is justifiably proud of creating and sharing such a brilliant record.

- Blair Martin.