HAIM

plus a lot of the little off beat syncopated percussion and synth parts. but yeah, it's more like the later, more mainstream pop that was freestyle influenced. I don't think it really sounds like that fleetwood mac record though. they do sound like FM in a general way but not like they took that particular album as a template to ripoff like some people are suggesting.

I think it's a mark of how singular the rhythmic approach is that everyone hears it and immediately thinks of a patch of years in the mid-late 80s, but then struggles to come up with a really close blueprint!

Which is not to say that Haim have done something new, but rather that in this regard the retro-mining is very precise.

Phil's "Don't Lose My Number"?

I get a Bangles vibe too (from the rhythms, though obv the vocals too to some extent) but when I go back and check none of the Bangles' tunes were riding quite the same vibe.

yeah, bangles def

they weren't quite rhythmically creative

The resemblance is a stretch but when "Edge" is playing I keep singing the Georgian song from this year's Eurovision over it.

The too-brief lift-off section of "Honey & I" is amazing.

Watching their itunes festival concert and feeling good.

My guess is that this isn't really down to the influence of any one band per se and more to do with them having watched a shitload of 80s movies at some point.

Maybe two thirds of the songs here are credit-rollers.

I find this happens a lot when discussing 80s-influenced bands. They're stuffed with signifiers of the 80s but it's hard to pin them down to one particular band. Even though If I Could Change Your Mind sounds very derivative to me I can't place what it's derivative of. I think for young bands, all of these 80s records they've heard have merged so the result sounds "80s" more than it sounds like any one artist. Which is why reviews tend to resort to vague catch-alls like "John Hughes soundtrack".

And I see that Matt's just made the same point but shorter.

There's a little bit of Kim Wilde in this too.

If I Could Change Your Mind sounds a bit like 80's Heart meets the "don't look back, you can never look back" bit from Boys of Summer (Heart obviously being another bunch of sisters channeling Fleetwood Mac).

I thought Heart when I saw Haim at Glastonbury but couldn't say exactly why.

Heart obviously being another bunch of sisters channeling Fleetwood Mac

Just realised this applies equally to the Corrs, so basically this is a rubbish point

One of the main accusations levelled at Haim seems to be that they're not daring or edgy enough; that they're aimed clearly at the same equivalent middle-aged whitebread audience extent in the mid-80s era they take their cues from. Is this fair? Are they really the Phil Collins / Billy Ocean / Aha / Wilson Philips of 2013? Are those who like them (middle-aged white men or otherwise) really just a bunch of Walter Whites who demand no more than a simple hook and a vague lyric to keep them satisfied? Is the fact I'm feeling this Haim album indicative that in a few months time I'll also fucking hate these other albums by Rashad Becker, Le1f and FIDLAR albums I'm also enjoying today?

I've listenned to this album a bit, not having heard anything by them previously. "falling" is very good and there are some more tracks that seem nice but I don't really see what all the fuss is about.
I haven't read the whole thread but they remind me a bit of ladyhawke in the super catchy 80s-electro-pop way. except ladyhawke's first album was great (but lacking depth).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WfKZ8Ohqj4

You could argue eighties audiences, thanks to MTV and the last bits of New Wave, had better ears.

xpost

wtf Walt White is into Boz Scaggs and Steely Dan, exemplary ILMer imo.

just a bunch of Walter Whites who demand no more than a simple hook and a vague lyric to keep them satisfied

Not the message I took from Breaking Bad to be honest.

A ton of great pop is about a simple hook and a vague lyric. Nothing to agonise over. It's just one flavour among many. Accusing Haim of not being "edgy" is like accusing These New Puritans of not writing radio bangers.

Although I'd say Haim's hooks aren't that simple, their lyrics aren't that vague and their production is fantastic. I don't buy your hierarchy, whether the straw man is (old-fashioned rockist model) teenage girls or (easier target) middle-aged white guys.

Seems pretty clear that Doglatin likes the record, he's just posing pointless essay questions and indulging in a bit of mild handwringing.

Hah, I guess I equate my own Dad in the eighties with Walter White in many ways. Don't think he bought any new music after 1990 off his own back, so Now 7 and Get Close are, for me, very much "Dad music". Haim are also "Dad music" in my mind, but only in the way they know exactly which nostalgic buttons to push for me to enjoy them without feeling overly emotionally manipulated. Neither do I think they're particularly bland. The conception that Haim are unchallenging might be founded on something, but I haven't listened to this yet and wished they'd fucked it up a bit more - I think that would be missing the point. They're not this generation's Coldplay is what I'm saying.

the Phil Collins / Billy Ocean / Aha / Wilson Philips of 2013?

Again, this doesn't have to be a bad thing, which is what many/some critics perhaps are missing. It's 2013, and maybe something like some combination/distant reflection of those acts is what we need now, or at least what we want. If in the the '80s they were or could be sort of facile, these days it's refreshing. I'm no Vampire Weekend guy, but I always appreciate the guy's approach to guitar, which he said was inspired by growing up in the distorted angry grunge era, which pushed him toward a clean guitar sound a la a lot of African music and more upbeat melodies. I don't listen to Haim because it sounds like the '80s - I have '80s music for that. But as a stubborn alternative to the I guess angriness and ugliness and aggression some want (couched as"depth," I guess) I find it very welcome.

The rockist aspect to Haim - they play their own instruments! - is partly what protects them from accusations of being mere product. Hanson might be a good comparison, too.

replace Walter White with any milquetoast middle-aged man - I only used him as a topical example.

Seems that for a lot of people Haim are fundamentally misunderstood, but it's interesting to hear why people have an aversion to them. I guess there hasn't really been a band like this in a while now, so they're getting (perhaps unfairly) mapped onto everything from manufactured teen-pop, leechy retromania, MOR rock and hipster indie. Thing is, no one seems to be able to agree on which.

I don't doubt that Haim are more likely to appeal to 80s Dads more than the latest Guettahouse banger, but that doesn't rule out their having appeal for younger audiences too.

scratch that second more

haim to cover "baby blue" on next EP

I'm glad Walter White is considered a typical middle-aged dad.

Lots of 20somethings singing along to them at the Roundhouse the other day. Not a lot of middle aged men.

A few years ago, a group of us middle aged pop hacks were disconcerted to discover that the 20somethings who were with us were wildly more enamoured of 80s MOR than we were. They couldn't believe our contempt for Everything I Do, for example, which they thought was an amazing ballad. So I think the assertion that 80s signifiers are for the old men might be misreading it.

Absolutely. This music has different resonances for different generations and lots of Haim fans are people who have discovered it via a similar route to the band rather than older guys (and why do middle-aged women never get mentioned?) who were big Mac fans in the 80s.

Right - '86 pop is slowly becoming the retro sound of right now. Of course it's going to appeal to younger generations, possibly more so than those who actually had to live through that sound at the time. Not dissimilar from the electro and post-punk revivals of last decade, just feels a lot more narrowed in on a very specific type of pop music.

The reason 'middle-aged men' were brought up is because that's what the Twitter/CollapseBoard people were arguing about being the target market for Haim and there was some discussion as to who was the target market - teens, middle-aged rockists or under-35 y/o hipsters.

Kind of depressing when discussion of music degenerates into guessing who the "target market" might be.

Which is worse, a band who knows their key demographic, or a band who just make music for themselves, and if anyone else likes it that's a bonus?

otm, plus it always ignores how diverse each of those markets are, and how - esp w/younger ones - a lot of it is reacting against itself

fleetwood mac have been "credible" touchstones for 20somethings for a while now i think? see also steely dan. and def 80s teen romances.

It's kind of an ipso facto thing that if '86 pop or whatever appeals to Haim, it very likely could appeal to their similarly aged peers as well.

Key thing, I guess, is that a lot of 20somethings will know these records inside out … because their parents had them, and probably also bought all the I Love the 80s-style comps. The only place 80s MOR didn't stay prevalent was in critical discourse; everywhere else it never went away.

this whole "its retro but hmmm what kind of retro is it?" talk drove me crazy when people were dissecting Kaputt and it drives me crazy w/ Haim. sure, no music exists in a bubble but jeez you guys give it a rest-- it sounds like 2013!!! music is music its not evolutionary biology.

So does that mean it shouldn't be discussed, or that you are bored by it being discussed? If the latter, why not just not read the thread?

At least the bands that HAIM have been compared to are slightly less questionable in quality than the ones The 1975 were being compared to.

I don't care what target demographic Haim aim for/appeal to. But (as with the collapseboard article and the subsequent furore) it is something that's been used as a club to beat them with, rather unfairly I should say.

For sure, I doubt many of the critics comparing the band to Fleetwood Mac could articulate exactly what aspect of Fleetwood Mac this band sounds like.

Like, it's really easy to reference those acts in a drive-by shorthand, but one thing I really like about Haim is that the band bears some musical scrutiny. I can compare them to Fleetwood Mac, but also explain why. I can bring up Latin freestyle, but also illustrate why that may be a touchstone. Hell, I could also bring up (and did) Wilson Philips, too, but not just because the band is three women singing pop songs. The touchstones and references have some specificity to them.

A lot of it is down to the lead singer's deeper vocal timbre. It's very distinctive and reminiscent of Chrissie Hynde, Stevie Nicks etc. I can also hear a bit of Bad-era Michael Jackson in there too with the vocal tics and the production style. I could see them doing a cover of The Way You Make Me Feel or something.

i think danielle's voice sounds similar enough to mcvie's

Maybe I mean McVie. I love the Mac's music but my background knowledge of who-was-who is woeful.