HAIM

Based on two listens on the bus today, this album is really good but the song with the dubstep bass stops it from being great. I don't get much of an r&b vibe - 80s or contemporary - from this at all, it reminds me more of those El Perro Del Mar/Taken By Trees albums produced by the guys from Studio.

xp i guess you are trying to say you don't connect with either haim or savages? i just don't see how they are comparable groups

other than they have wymmyn with guitars in

Enjoying the new tracks on the album immensely but really every time "the wire" comes on I have to put it on repeat.

i heard "the wire" on an actual american commercial radio station this morning.

what kind of station? alt rock? top 40?

I don't get much of an r&b vibe - 80s or contemporary - from this at all

I get more r&b from some of the new songs, "If I Could Change Your Mind"/"Days Are Gone"/"My Song 5" specifically, than any of the old songs.

alt rock station

this so great. not sure why i waited on listening to it. i think i got some fatigue from the trickle of songs and 'the wire' didn't make me as excited as 'don't save me' or 'falling' but this is really really good stuff.

except the wire is hitting hard now. is the album version different from whatever i originally hard?

the version at the top of the thread sounds v much like a demo compared to the album version

I get more r&b from some of the new songs, "If I Could Change Your Mind"/"Days Are Gone"/"My Song 5" specifically, than any of the old songs.

My Song 5 is terrible because you get the sense that they actually believed all that nonsense about them being Fleetwood Mac-meets-R&B or whatever and tried to write an obviously R&B-influenced song. Only problem is that both they and their producer are really bad at it, the whole thing is clumsy and just doesn't work.

"Honey I" is a nice take on "Sweet Jane"-isms.

love my song 5 and all the production on this across the board, dunno what y'all on about

"Honey I" is a nice take on "Sweet Jane"-isms.

And, of course, Fleetwood Mac, not least, um, a bit of "Honey Hi."

Also, there's tons of R&B to this. It's like an awesome fusion of Fleetwood Mac and Teena Marie.

Based on two listens on the bus today, this album is really good but the song with the dubstep bass stops it from being great. I don't get much of an r&b vibe - 80s or contemporary - from this at all, it reminds me more of those El Perro Del Mar/Taken By Trees albums produced by the guys from Studio.

― boxedjoy, Wednesday, September 18, 2013 1:19 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

maybe, but the vocals on the title track are pretty obviously influenced by 80s R&B. teena marie might be a good reference point, but I hear a lot of latin freestyle type stuff. like real commercial freestyle. lisa lisa. maybe even martika or something.

yeah and "my song 5" seems like a failure to me

"My Song 5" keeps reminding me of Dirty Projectors' "Stillness in the Move".

Speaking of hamfisted attempts at R&B homage...

I hear a lot of latin freestyle type stuff.

Oh totally. These guys would do an awesome Nu Shooz or Pretty Poison. I mean, holy shit, this is basically Haim:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omx7u0ZWUAY

An "I Can't Wait" cover would be a good look for them.

omg

Stevie Nicks' "I Can't Wait," he means.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmwFtOJaOcA

If they conflated them live people would lose their shit.

my god

Please assume I meant a Nu Shooz / Nicks mashup.

I also feel like Haim is the band to rehabilitate "Hungry Eyes".

Now that's just going too far.

"my song 5" is a way less good version of "send me down" but i'm still down with it

oh man, pretty poison. it's 1987 all over again! were the haim girls even born then? not that this would invalidate their tastes.

i'm going to post this just cos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v8YragSIuI

haim's lyrics kind of remind me of this stuff, too

but yeah, there's no getting around that they've probably worn their copies of mirage and tango in the night down to nothing

were the haim girls even born then? not that this would invalidate their tastes.

i interviewed alana about this point specifically and i think a lot of it is unconscious reverberations that this stuff possibly had in late-'90s r&b?

I've been waiting years for Tango in the Night to displace Rumours in the influence department.

were the haim girls even born then? not that this would invalidate their tastes.

i interviewed alana about this point specifically and i think a lot of it is unconscious reverberations that this stuff possibly had in late-'90s r&b?

― emo canon in twee major (BradNelson), Thursday, September 19, 2013 10:11 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you mean they're picking it up 2nd hand? that doesn't seem possible. anxiety of influence maybe?

Yeah, I dunno, the period details of the Haim music is so OTM that it has to be more than osmosis at work.

i agree! it's just i didn't get much out of going that direction in the interview. who knows

they might just be sick of FM comparisons/questions, or anxious about being too close to their influences

but yeah they seem to have gone to some lengths to replicate certain sounds so the naïve line rings kind of hollow

unless it's like the monkeys writing shakespeare thing, where they just some ended up in this "tango in the night" space without ever having heard any pop music whatsoever

that would be the bomb

Man, how much would that suck, if you were a band and you stumbled on this awesome, awesome sound, and then someone passes you a copy of "Tango in the NIght" and you deflate once you realize that's exactly what you sound like. I mean, it would be awesome, of course! But it'd still be a bummer.

xp i guess you are trying to say you don't connect with either haim or savages? i just don't see how they are comparable groups

other than they have wymmyn with guitars in

― monotony, Wednesday, 18 September 2013 22:00 (Yesterday) Bookmark

i was merely referring to and concurring with the commonplace assertion that both bands are pretty dead-end pastichey. hopefully this transmission reaches you over on planet duh

if I stumbled into sounding like "Seven Wonders" I'd force my manager to buy me an expensive dinner.

I don't think Haim is that pastichey, in the end, esp. compared (for some reason) to Savages, who are truly A+B+C=exactly the sum of its parts.

Was Cut Copy the first on the '80s Mac tip?

Haim's songwriting is pastichey as hell but the production is full of shiny modern details. Savages are about as rote as they come.

"My Song 5" isn't one of the best songs here but it has a sinister creep to it that I find very satisfying.

Was Cut Copy the first on the '80s Mac tip?

"Take Me Over" is more than inspired. It's copied.

i was merely referring to and concurring with the commonplace assertion that both bands are pretty dead-end pastichey. hopefully this transmission reaches you over on planet duh

ok m8 no need to get snarky

fwiw i'd agree with Matt DC in that HAIM represents a confluence of disparate influences whereas savages are more, like, explicitly drawing just from the one scene

"take me over" is also very men at work in addition to being very FM

i was way more into the remixes than the originals as stand-alone songs but packaged together as an album i'm enjoying it quite a bit

Yeah the Duke Dumont remix of Falling is transcendent.

heard club remixes of 'don't save me' quite a bit while out this summer, very good jam that i approve of