"While recording Something to Tell You, they met every day in studios — four for the drum parts alone. Each space was from a different era, which translated onto the album. At Vox Recording, which dates to the 1930s, 'it’s just linoleum floors, so it sounds very live,' Danielle said. 'We recorded with one mike in the back of the room.” Sunset Sound had “more of a ’70s, tight wood sound. You can really hear the warmth of the drums.'"
- "Haim Wants To Prove Vintage Vibes Feel Just Right Now", New York Times 2017
Loved loved loved Days Are Gone... it felt like something emotionally real cutting through the elaborate pasticherie (those canned-sounding mid-late 80s reverbs) ... the tension between the two levels on which the music worked (longing and pain from life; irony and historical hyper-awareness) was delicious... and then there was the internal tension of the music itself as a performance, the thrill I've described before as the shock of ability: the sheer musicality of the singing and playing, the rhythmatization of the voice and the myriad tics of syncopation in the drums and guitar parts...
But Something To Tell You left me cold, just seemed too fiddly and over-worked...
Conversely the new one feels downbeat and sluggish (I guess there are reasons for that).
I suppose I will give it another go at some point
Overall feels similar to the arc taken by Vampire Weekend - from freshness to fussiness - as commented on in the end of year faves + thoughts at Blissblog:
Talking of the Zone of Fruitless Intensification
Nearly forgot - the Unfave!
Vampire Weekend, Father of the Bride
After several attempts that only got a little way in before I had to bail, finally, during a long journey, I made another kind of lengthy arduous trek: listening to the entirety of the fourth Vampire album. Eucch - everything that was enjoyably precious and dainty in the first two albums has now definitively become prissy and over-ornamented. What is the sound Koenig & kru are aiming for here - Lindsey Buckingham '80s solo album meets Dave Matthews Band with a bit of Wilco thrown in? And did I mention that it's long? The debut (which still sounds so fleet and fresh) clocked in at under 35 minutes, a canny return to the manageable proportions of the classic LP; Contra was similarly short n' sweet and left you wanting more. But FotB, in its middle-aged spread, leaves you wanting less. Or in my case, wanting none.
3 comments:
Same thing happened to me. Women In Music Part III is far better than Something To Tell You, but I can't help something is missing when you can put Haim and Sheryl Crow in the same sentence... It could be worse, though (Foals, Battles, et al) Haim still have great songs in them, as long as they are long runners, we will hear them soon.
The Sheryl Crowism is certainly an issue... whereas the earlier hints of Wilson Philips and Shania Twain weren't a problem for my palate
Again I have to agree... Don know what to say about Shania Twain. Wilson Philips, of course, these vocal harmonies from the early nineties that you can also hear, somehow, in Love Thy Will Be Done (of course a Prince song sung by Martika, but onethat could easily have been another Release Me)The great thing of Days Are Gone is that all of that is stripped to the bone, and it works really well to this date. 90s music is a huge and wide road of too many things going at the same time.
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