If you’re not down with the trio of sisters, collectively known as Haim, and the badass super-good music they’re making, Women in Music Pt. III is another opportunity to hop on the wagon. They’re individually known as Danielle, Este and Alana and they’ve got the kind of effortless cool that every rock band wishes they had. On this record, it’s just a solid, solid run of songs, well produced and well performed. I don’t mean this to sound at all like damning with faint praise or a backhanded compliment, but I feel like Haim’s just turned into this reliably top-notch machine that generates really great songs on an insanely consistent basis. There’s only one song here, Los Angeles, that isn’t really up to snuff and I was briefly worried given that it’s the album opener. But there was no need. Every other song, and if you get the bonus edition there are fifteen, are just great, quirky, indie-pop-rock masterpieces. The music is pretty heavily produced, not in a lush way, but in a very obviously processed way, on a lot of the tracks, sometimes in pretty odd ways. All That Ever Mattered, for instance, features a very strange sample of a scream. But the album works because the songs are strong. Man from the Magazine is both the shortest and the most stripped down of the tracks, featuring only a rather demoy acoustic guitar, but it brings home that it’s the melodies and the hooks that make these songs really stick. The occasionally weird production just gives them a little extra spice. I was going to mention two or three of my absolute favorites, but looking at the track list just stymies me; they’re just all so good, with the exception of Los Angeles. I will mention Hallelujah, one of the bonus tracks, which is probably the only Haim track to date that I’d call “sweet,” but that’s what it is, a really sweet, heartfelt ode to sisterhood. I kind of wish it had been the ending track instead of Summer Girls, but that’s a small quibble for an album that (almost) start to finish evokes a spectrum of rich emotion with songcraft, technical prowess and a quirky production aesthetic. Here’s a trilogy I hope rolls right into a franchise. 4 stars.
tl;dr – great songcraft, great production and a rich spectrum of emotions; Haim turns out a solid collection of excellent music that really works. 4 stars.