HAIM

just listened to the first half of this again on the way home from uni, very nearly danced down the metro platform to "if i could change your mIIIIiiiiiiiiiIIiiind"

i listened to it. there's nothing WRONG with it i guess but it's sooooooo pastichey, like there is literally no modern twist on a very old sound, and i don't think i have quite enough affection for that sound to have a connection to something that just replicates it - it's so exact that it almost seems automated, all the little hiccups of breath and melody exactly where you expect them.

also tbqh my fleetwood mac/stevie nicks knowledge has a long way to go - i only really know rumours and tusk and a handful of other songs - and i'd rather carry on gradually investigating them

all the little hiccups of breath and melody exactly where you expect them.

one of the things i like best about the album is danielle's surprisingly weird vocal tics and the way she constantly plays with meter, elongating and suffocating words etc - i suppose you could say you expect her to do that by the last few tracks, but she certainly doesn't have a conventional vocal delivery to my ears

lex you gotta hear tango in the night!

Yeah I don't see anything predictable about Danielle's choices - the way her voice keeps changing through a song like Don't Save Me is my favourite thing about the band.

i feel like the vocalist could actually be foregrounded more - didn't get much of a sense of her personality at all. i didn't find anything particularly weird about her delivery though.

There are three vocalists, although two of them sound pretty similar because y'know sisters.

Srsly though the idea that Lex went to Tusk before Tango In The Night is kind of hilarious but really you should listen to the latter immediately and forget about this Haim album for a bit.

Was listening to "The Wire" again and got major Shania vibes. Just me, or was that mentioned above?

tbh guys it's not like it's a big crime to like something that hits a partic retro spot, i just don't get why all the absurdly overstated swivel-eyed flannel about "shiny modern detailed latin freestyle type confluence of disparate surprisingly weird vocal influences" etc - these supposed innovations are totally marginal, remedial

and tango in the night sounds like, aeons more future-minded than this fwiw

A couple summers ago I talked with some Pitchfork types who agreed that Tango was not only the Mac album that mattered most as adolescent and teens but in retrospect outlined a pop future we still haven't totally heard.

History of ILM is full of people overinflating marginal production quirks into radical innovations. Saying something has been given a modern production sheen is hardly the same as saying it's innovative.

i don't think i ever said they were innovative. i just think labelling them as mere pastiche, as nothing more than fleetwood mac facsimile, is a very facile and unfair criticism

I don't think you can deny the songwriting is pastiche really.

as i feared you guys are sort of narrating the piece i'm writing about them as it is being written, oh well

tango has a presence and humidity that this doesn't and, as alfred said, nothing has really lived up to. still i think a composite of pastiches and approaches in even the slightest modern setting can be thrilling, and is here. i feel ppl who think that is sort of a dead end bc while the songs are strong and the feel is almost mathematically right i am colder toward this record that i expected. still good fun.

tango is also the product of songwriters and musicians with decades of work on their own and together under their belts. the fact that haim is even being compared to that mac lineup is... impressive!

i don't really even hear any modern sheen. the first time i heard them (without knowing what the song was) i genuinely thought it was an actual d-list 80s soft rock song. if i didn't know they were a contemporary band i would never have guessed. i think that's what strikes me as particularly pointless about them. i think i get the same bot vibes from them that rtc gets from ariana grande

think you misspelt inane there max

lol

Saying something has been given a modern production sheen is hardly the same as saying it's innovative.

― Matt DC, Thursday, 26 September 2013 14:11 (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't think i ever said they were innovative. i just think labelling them as mere pastiche, as nothing more than fleetwood mac facsimile, is a very facile and unfair criticism

― monotony, Thursday, 26 September 2013 14:25 (24 minutes ago) Bookmark

k pedants not "innovations", uh... ~areas of distinction~ shall we say then

fwiw i didnt and wouldnt argue they were "nothing more than fleetwood mac facsimile" either, they're obv a little bit cannier than that but still nothing that adds up to much that would cause a stir in anyone without a mojo subscription

still good fun.

― emo canon in twee major (BradNelson), Thursday, 26 September 2013 14:41 (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

i agree with this just ftr

They sound like a really good young contemporary version of a late '80s pop outfit like Wilson-Phillips. The Mac element is being a tad overstated here, as is the future-genius of "Tango," which is one of my fave records, Mac or otherwise, but definitely in line with what Lindsey was up to at the time courtesy new technology/samplers and def. in line what he's still up to today. This HAIM is nowhere near that frantic/frenetic/anal retentive. Credit different drugs, perhaps.

or no drugs

Yeah, that too!

What HAIM needs is overwhelming paranoid and control-freak tendencies fueled by swimming pools full of cocaine.

In other words, they need to have Lindsey Buckingham produce them, for old time's sake.

well, he's on the NIN album. Maybe he's in session mode again.

blah blah late pass i really like this band

Shit, now I feel like a shmuck seeing that DeRo also compared it to Wilson Phillips. But I didn't mean it as a criticism!

Haim, Days Are Gone (Polydor)

Has indie-rock seriously gotten so twee and “poptimistic” that it can hail as a buzz band a California trio aiming at a modern update of Fleetwood Mac as distaff beard-rock but barely achieving a less polished version of Wilson Phillips? Really?

Rating on the four-star scale: .5 stars.

"distaff beard-rock"!

Does anyone actually use the terms 'poptimist' or 'poptimistic' for anything other than handwringing purposes?

I already loved this album but DeRo being a prick about it makes me want to gold-plate it and wear it around my neck. Good use of scare quotes, asshole.

wilson phillips? i've heard wilson phillips, i saw wilson phillips live just one calendar year ago, and this is no wilson phillips

I'd seriously die if Haim covered "Impulsive" though.

I already loved this album but DeRo being a prick about it makes me want to gold-plate it and wear it around my neck. Good use of scare quotes, asshole.

^this

did this guy just stay in 1994 permanently or

also i had to look up distaff and i'm pretty confused now

I had to look it up the first time I saw it in an album review. I get that writers want a synonym for "female" but a word based on the idea of a woman's job being spinning seems a tad archaic.

haha i think that might be the most inchoately splenetic use of the p-word i've ever seen

Haim are basically motivated by the same eternal indie rock impulse as Wilco circa Summer Teeth only brought forward two decades. As with all dumb music critics dero has no capacity to abstract away from specific stylistic cues.

Yeah. OTM.

Fuck that guy and his misplaced contrarianism.

serious question: does he have a Chicago following?

lol I was trying to remember who I had UNfavorably compared to wilson philips recently, turns out it was Fun.

DeRo? I don't know if he has a following, per se, but he's well liked enough. I mean, if you read the comments on the NPR site and on his Facebook page, people tend to take him seriously. He's also capable of being reasonable, but that rarely comes out in print. It's just so easy to take the contrarian dismissive stance, because it's so much easier/more attention-getting to take something down than praise something.

I get why someone attached to his views of rock would hate Haim, I'm just glad I'm not attached to those views

i'm surprised he did not get something in there about how you should listen to the cellar-aged post punk of SAVAGES instead

Tim otm. Make it three brothers instead of sisters and rub off a little of the production gloss and DeRo would be all over this.

Eh, the guy's pretty useless, but I don't think this is accurate at all. If anything, DeRo tends to rate rock bands with women in it higher, because, OMG, finally, ladies playing rock. And he severely underrates pop, because, OMG, ladies playing pop, but not the kind of pop this guy thinks they should be making, they should be ashamed of being ladies.

lol distaff beard-rock appears to have been stricken from his blog

dude loves donut rock

Geoff Barrow weighs in

https://twitter.com/jetfury/status/382194599164649473

https://twitter.com/jetfury/status/383369303997050880