Review: Haim - Days Are Gone

You can picture it now, retro enthused youths hanging around basketball courts with their flannel shirts tied firmly around their high-waisted, bleached denim shorts, feeling cool because the dramatic change in their look can only be attainable if they stand in different heighted positions, ghetto blaster placed firmly on one’s shoulder, blasting album Days are Gone from the speakers and into the airwaves. 

The vibrations that are spun from each track leads the retro youths in a communal lean from left to right in time with the punchy bass-lines and unique voice of sister trio Haim. Their songs are smothered in a gloss that could only be the effect of the extreme hype that surrounded Haim from early on in the year, with prestigious pedestal-ing that comes with being on the top end of the BBC Sound of 2013 poll. 

With the radio teasing tracks out of the comforting arms of the Days are Gone album sleeve, Haim have been subjected to a submerging of that good old fashioned anxiety that comes with the pressure to follow through  on an album that would do justice to pre-release tracks ‘Don’t Save Me’ and ‘Falling,’ and that would ultimately please the army of retro youths who have been anticipating the release by applying too much white shoe polish to their sneakers and practicing their back flips for the dance battles that would inevitably happen at the first sounds of racing drums, self-embraced, encouraging lyrics and energizing hooks that are heard bursting from every inch of Days are Gone. 

The album falls into stressing, out of focus, gritty, guitar snubs that rubs dirt in the face of bubble-gum- girl-band-gloop and stamps on the lungs of the record labels that didn’t let them write what they wanted to in the first place. Each track has its own identity from a slightly dark, crackling guitar sting in ‘My Song 5’; which is focused on sniggering at a past ex boyfriend, to a down beat almost ballad-like ‘Edge’ which is glistened with shimmery cymbals and a tone that suggests the video should include a shot of Danielle Haim singing out of a rained on window. Track ‘Let Me Go’ sounds like listening to a war cry bordering on the soundtrack to the angry dance in Footloose. The song builds with an abundance of drums, sterilizing guitar riffs and an attitude that could only be present due to a sharp punch in the gut.  

As a whole, the album is far from a disappointment, the echoed vocals and dramatic, melodic tunes, form into basketball-loving, 90’s American pop which is twisted into a distinctive noise that can only be described as the beginning of what is going to be long yet satisfying Haim revolution.  

Words by Carris Boast