HAIM

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

damn every time someone criticises this band i like them a bit more, wtf is wrong with me

er the band i mean

More interesting to me than boring old dudes is the probable double-standard w/r/t dance music - Lindstrom strikes me as no less pastichey than Haim by and large (and the Lindstrom/Christabelle album is one of the few obvious precursors to what they're doing here, at least in part) though obviously over the course of his career he's covered a lot more pastiche-ground, but it's not a criticism that tends to come up - like, we all know it but it's not something that tends to worry people.

Also I think Haim could stand to sound more like Shania Twain to be honest.

Give 'em time! They're young!

So it's pronounced HIME? I did not know that until tonight.

"If I Could Change Your Mind" has squatted in my brain for the last week and refuses to leave. Help!

super super technically it's "HI-yem" but the accepted baseline pronunciation is indeed "hime"

Dad was Israeli. Name is Hebrew for "life."

Sloppy typo on the back of the CD cover

http://i.imgur.com/DOWU6fk.jpg

Is that the commercial release or a review copy?

Commercial

Oooh, like l'chaim. I get it.

i'm probably five years too late in thinking it's weird that bands release deluxe editions simultaneously with the official release, right?

yeah. but i feel you.

good stuff on the bonus disc btw (send me down might be their most forward-looking song?), but even more good stuff on youtube.

Dad was Israeli. Name is Hebrew for "life."

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, September 28, 2013 8:59 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think they chose the name because it's their last name, not because of the meaning.

is this out yet

Monday.

:/ http://www.nme.com/news/haim/72930

Given the subject matter of "The Wire" it's possible that the dedication gesture was not quite as sincere as the article suggests.

APT

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/p480x480/1233508_10151933090004273_1635052024_n.jpg

I think they chose the name because it's their last name, not because of the meaning.

Well, yeah. Duh. I just meant that unlike, say, Corey Haim, whose last name is the same, this Haim comes from their father, an Israeli, which explains why it is pronounced with Hebrew inflection. I brought up the meaning as a Hebrew pronunciation reference.

Given the subject matter of "The Wire" it's possible that the dedication gesture was not quite as sincere as the article suggests.

― Tim F, Sunday, September 29, 2013 8:22 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh come on

it's their most popular song