Haim

• Days Are Gone [Columbia, 2013] **
• Women in Music Pt. III [Columbia, 2020] A-

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Days Are Gone [Columbia, 2013]
Three sisters unite to negotiate reassuringly generic man trouble--even the madrigal hooks have a suprapersonal anonymity to them ("The Wire," "Falling") **

Women in Music Pt. III [Columbia, 2020]
As the title specifies, these three thirtyish sisters are musos by heritage and choice. Unlike most sibling acts, they focus less on their collective image than on how their individual instruments assert themselves and meld together. So their songwriting comes lyrics-second, with even hooks not such a big deal. On their third album, Rostam Batmanglij helps them beat this limitation: each of the 16 terse tracks has its own way of standing out. From booty calls to dreams so much sweeter than what anyone wakes up to in this cruel time, the lyrics evoke the pains and complexities of the single life each of these seamless siblings is obliged to face alone after all. A-