HAIM

Days Are Gone

Sure, the sequencing could have used some tweaking, but Days Are Gone is a commendable effort that manages to answer all of the hype.

Freakily poised but never cloying, Days Are Gone is an album that will fade blissfully into your local Urban Outfitters/vintage shop/American gathering, where, like some kind of mollifying drug, people exposed to it will be happier without either knowing or caring why.

It's a fantastically fun experience through a balls-out circuit of disco, pop, funk, R&B and rock, splattered with singalong mantras pertaining to l'amour. Days Are Gone will do nothing to stem the flow of hype washing over these girls (and boy).

Days Are Gone showcases the band’s individual strengths that have been pulled together to create a collective group with intensity and depth of potential.

‘Days Are Gone’ confirms what everybody already knew in fabulous style; that Haim are the band to shout about.

A debut album that could pass for a greatest-hits collection, Days Are Gone will provide musical comfort food for some, and possibly an introduction to irony-free pop for others.

What separates the coven of sisters from their UK contemporaries, however, is that their debut doesn’t define them explicitly. It balances expectations with mystery, aligning their identity with a roulette of vantage points.

Haim have been working towards this since they were barely strong enough to hold a guitar, and over time they've written more good tunes than most bands manage in a whole career.

This is frivolous, immaculate music. It is unlikely to gain any greater resonance as time marches forward, but just the same, I suspect that it will sound no more and no less pristine in 35 years than it does at this very moment.

It’s not revolutionary, life-changing ‘high art’ but right here, right now Haim’s sassy, enthusiastic, ‘one for all’ joie de vivre feels freshly invigorating, infectious ...basically, a drop o’ the good stuff. 

For a first foray into the pop universe, Days Are Gone is a hell of an opening salvo.

Haim neither flinch nor blush in their directness and neither should you in enjoying ‘Days Are Gone’ for what it is: unabashed fun.

Days Are Gone caters very specifically fans of slick Eighties pop-rock and little else.

Stretched to album length, Haim’s shtick grows repetitive and the music is too frequently solid rather than inspired.

Across Days Are Gone’s 11 tracks, vocals are invariably, unlovably forced, lyrics delivered with dead-eyed artificiality, and for all their harping on being a real, organic band, the whole drab thing sounds like it’s never seen an actual guitar.