And it’s also there in they way all three sisters gracefully trade off lead-vocal duties, none of them hogging the frontman spotlight, and in the confidence it must take for all three to pull off totally convincing white-soul vocal showboating when the song calls for it. All those lessons don’t just manifest themselves in the obvious ways, in song-structure or guitar riffs, but in subtler, less showy ways as well: Quiet shades of backing-vocal interplay, perfectly-placed woodblock thunks, basslines so unshowy that you almost don’t notice how propulsive they are. On Days Are Gone, you can hear where the Gladwellian 10,000 hours that all three almost certainly put in pay off. Alana Haim, the youngest of the three sisters, was four when she started covering these ’70s classic-rock songs. The sisters’ first band was with their parents, and it was an all-covers thing with the hilarious name Rockinhaim. The Haim sisters did something similar with music, and they did it from a very early age.
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When you’re first learning how to write, teachers urge you to find sentences that you like and then to copy those sentences out longhand, so you get get a better idea of how they work, so you can start to internalize those mechanics. Their family must be over the moon.Īnd honestly, those parents get some of the credit. I’ve never met the sisters in HAIM, and I’m proud of them. They seem to have their sound totally figured out, and even the most forgettable songs have so many tiny swirling hooks that it takes weeks of listening to sniff them all out. There’s not one underwhelming song on the whole thing, and the level of shimmering craft is through the roof. Now, with their first album, they’ve made an LP of assured and fizzy pop music, one that sounds utterly of-the-moment without conforming to a single recent trend. If you watch them onstage, the three sisters, all in their early-to-mid-20s, seem self-possessed and present in ways that much more seasoned bands are still trying to figure out - and they all seem to genuinely like each other, which is an accomplishment in itself.
I practically explode with pride every time I hear my daughter atonally howl along to the Annie soundtrack, so it’s tough to conceive of what the parents of the Haim sisters must be going through. "Little of Your Love" and its perfectly timed breakdown are a testament to how well Haim uses pop's most reliable tricks, while the irresistible beats and guitars on "Kept Me Crying" feel like a sadder, wiser callback to "The Wire," proving that while there's nothing as audacious as "My Song 5" here, the band hasn't extinguished its spark entirely.I am absolutely outing myself as a lame sentimental dad here, but I can’t think about HAIM, the young and ridiculously talented band of California sisters, without imagining how proud their parents must be.
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They sound uncannily like Wilson Phillips on "Found It in Silence"'s crisply empowering pop, and could pass for Fleetwood Mac on the throaty confessions of "Nothing's Wrong." Something to Tell You's best songs use this baked-in familiarity in equally reassuring and satisfying ways: As it strikes the perfect balance between heartfelt and glossy, the chorus of "Want You Back" feels like returning to an old flame's arms.
More than ever, Haim calls to mind Sheryl Crow, Shania Twain, Amy Grant, and the era's other chart-toppers.
But where the Haim sisters made those influences seem not just fresh but inventive on their debut, this time they embrace their straightforwardness. During the years between Days Are Gone and Something to Tell You, Haim entered their mature phase - which is saying something, since the '80s and '90s mainstream pop that makes up the backbone of their music isn't exactly impetuous-sounding to begin with.