Nothings Gonna Wake Me Now Cause Im a Slave to the Sound

Lorde was not the only highly buzzed about new artist to release an album last week (see my review: I'm Kind of Over Being Told to Throw My Hands in the Air). Much like Lorde, Haim built their buzz with critically adored EP and plenty of high profile endorsements (in the case of Haim wide ranging artists from Rihanna to Mumford & Sons have express support) but unlike Lorde the three sisters of Haim (and one unseen male drummer) have also build a reputation of a great live act playing basically every major festival over the past year.

Unlike Lorde whose debut album was made up almost entire of new songs, Haim does recycle half the songs on their full length first album Days Are Gone from their previous EP’s, whether this is a good thing or not depend on if you already bought the EP’s or not. Even as a listener it is a bit disappointing that much of the album is not new. But to steal the NBC’s slogan from decade, if you are just hearing of Haim for the first time, the songs are new to you.

If you are new to Haim, there is a reason why everyone from Rihanna to Mumford and Sons are championing the trio; they check almost every musical box you can think off. The first thing I heard was Falling (which is also the first track on the album) which harkens back to Southern California rock of the seventies like Fleetwood Mac, a comparison that deepens as each sister trade off lead vocals, but they also combine their voices that are reminiscent of nineties RnB. They go deep on RnB with songs like Go Deep with its penetrating bass worthy of any slow jam from two decades ago. There is also a pop sensibility of that other sibling band Hanson, but since all the members of Haim are legally able to buy beer, there is not an underlying cheesiness to them.

Haim’s influences sometime get too prevalent. Most notably on the first new single off the album The Wire which completely lifted another seventies So-Cal band The Eagles guitar riff from Heartache Tonight. And on Forever, it is hard not to hear the synthesizers from New Order’s Bizarre Love Triangle. It is a fine line between homage and stealing and Haim toes the line a little too close a couple times on Days Are Gone.

For those familiar with Haim’s previous EP’s, the group gets weird and dark on some of the newer tracks on the album which makes it more diverse than the very homogeneous Pure Heroine that Lorde put out. My Song 5 sound more like something you would hear on a Dirty Projectors album than from the group that put out the Forever EP. While Let Me Go is a menacing track to that could have been a hit on alternative rock stations back in the nineties.

Last Tuesday was the deadline for the 2014 Grammy awards which is probably why Haim and Lorde (and a few other artists) dropped their album on Monday. Both are angling for a Best New Artists nomination, which should be a lock for both, along with Kacey Musgraves as well as maybe Capital Cities, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (assuming they are eligible, the rules for the category are fuzzy so not so new acts like Imagine Dragons and Kendrick Lamar may also be in the mix even though they do not seem very "new"). And the last two entrants may be the ones to beat next January, being fresh in a voters mind is usually a good thing. Lorde may have the inside track because of the smash Royals but Days Gone By is a much more fun album.

Song to Download – Falling

Days Are Gone gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.