Glossing over the melodies
Slick production of rhythmic pop gives California girls Haim an immaculate yet unremarkable sound
POP
Haim: Something To Tell You
Polydor
Breakfast Muff: Eurgh!
Amour Foo Francis Mcdonald & Harry Pye: Bonjour Shoeshine Records/republic of Music
JJJ
If nothing else, the Haim sisters – Danielle, Este and Alana – deserve kudos for giving Valley girls a good name. Hailing from California’s San Fernando valley, the siblings owned their locale by playing as the Valli Girls when they were still in their teens but it is as family band
Haim that they have helped to counter the popular image of the privileged airhead immortalised in song (by Frank Zappa) and film (by Clueless).
Instead, Haim evoke the Golden State’s breezy freeways with their slick appropriation of Fleetwood Mac-style sunshine MOR. Second album Something to Tell You seamlessly picks up where their 2013 debut Days Are Gone left off. Lead single Want You Back does all the telling that is required, being one of the better examples of their rhythmic pop (all three sisters play drums) topped with airy, harmonic MOR and Danielle’s economic funky guitar playing.
The confident country-dappled pop of Nothing’s Wrong summons up the spirit of Christine Mcvie, while Little of Your Love occupies the more bubblegum territory of their tour buddy Taylor Swift. Like the rest of the album, it is immaculately produced but missing the killer touch of the Mac’s melodies.
With the recipe well and truly established, everything else is but a tiny variation on a theme. Ready For
You is a ruthless radio pop tune with Mariah trills, Lyndsay Buckingham phrasing and 80s production inflections familiar from Prince records.
In that respect, there is not much to mark this out as a 21st century release, nor to reflect their ability to rock out with righteous conviction.
Found It In Silence is a marginally beefier proposition buoyed up with strident strings, and they vary the formula slightly with the breathless falsetto funk of Walking Away and tremulous ballad Night So Long, about the loneliness of the longdistance touring musician, but overall Haim remain stronger on capturing a glossy sound than writing a top tune. In contrast, Glasgow’s Breakfast
Muff cut to the cathartic chase with their energised punky indie rants. Debut album Eurgh! may be an exclamation of disgust but it is also a blast of fresh air. Recorded in four days by the instrument-swapping trio of Eilidh Mcmillan, Simone Wilson and Cal Donnelly, no track hangs about for very long. They just make their spiky grrrl punk political point and move on, preserving the generation gap on Baby Boomers, tearing into bullies on the 50-second garage clatter of Lunch Money and pushing RU A Feminist to the brink of derangement. Musical moderates might want to keep a safe distance from any band that proclaims “I want to wear your skin to my birthday party” but isn’t it more rewarding to live dangerously?
For a softer, more cultured experience, check out Bonjour ,a thoughtful collaboration between Teenage Fanclub drummer and Shoeshine Records supremo Francis Macdonald and London-based artist Harry Pye, with the former providing the elegant soundtrack to the latter’s lyrics on art appreciation, nostalgic reminiscences and the simple pleasures. This is a gentle exchange between middle-aged men about the art and music which has shaped their lives. Macdonald provides a surftastic backdrop to Mike Love
Fan Club, while Pye ruminates on the part Mondrian played in his relationship with his father, his love of the Jean Luc Godard canon (and equivalent dislike of the films of David Cronenberg and Oliver Stone) and that time he met Lucien Freud. ■
No track hangs about for very long. They just make their spiky grrrl punk political point and move on