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Album reviews Music

Haim continue to deliver reliably catchy pop tunes on Something To Tell You

The Haim sisters have delivered a second album as solidly conceived as their excellent first. Danielle, Este and Alana Haim broke out in the year leading up to the release of 2013’s Days Are Gone, and since then the Los Angeles trio have become one of pop’s most reliably catchy acts, choosing to concentrate on earworms in a genre for which reinvention is a de facto expectation.

As with its predecessor, Something To Tell You is more about hooks than a single hook. It combines tight harmonizing, double-time R&B-style singing, and zig-zagging rhythms that recall the so-called “soft” rock (ie. straight-up pop) of the 80s. As such, many of the songs are intensely suited to singing reassuringly into the eyes of a close friend, family member or lover, perhaps whilst simultaneously executing a moderately complex choreographed dance routine ambling around the waterfront area of a mid-sized U.S. city in high-waisted jeans as part of a karaoke video shoot or speeding down a desert highway with your pedicure sticking out the minivan sunroof like Drew Barrymore in the Boys On The Side trailer.

Relationships continue to be Haim’s lyrical inspiration. The group also reteamed with Days Are Gone producer Ariel Rechtshaid, who is adept at using subtle tweaks and flourishes to create evocative soundscapes without eclipsing the sisters’ impressive vocal chemistry. If there is a difference between albums one and two, its the slightly twangier vibes and a structural emphasis on keyboard and guitar breakdowns that could be extendable live. It’s not hard to imagine Something To Tell You translating well to Haim’s amped-up stage show.

The two strongest and most single-worthy songs Want You Back and Nothing’s Wrong open the album and are followed by Little Of Your Love, a raucous number featuring a psych-y 60s keyboard build and classic-rock guitar squeal. You Never Knew (cowritten by Dev Hynes) gives the album a blissfully minimal centrepiece, while Kept Me Crying is swaggeringly rockist and gets quite skronky during the middle eight bit. Found It In Silence, with its Annie Lennoxesque symphonic sound (not surprising given coproducer Rostam Batmanglij’s stated love of Walking On Broken Glass), is the most melodramatic moment. And in classic pop album fashion, things wind down with a pair of palette-cleansing ballads, Right Now and the lightly dirgey Night So Long, the former being the more epic of the two.

A small quibble is Haim’s occasional tendency to eternally ride out choruses, though this is more apparent when singing along than when passively listening.

Top track: You Never Knew

kevinr@nowtoronto.com | @kevinritchie

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