Haim, “My Song 5â€
After months of relentless hype, Este, Danielle, and Alana Haim released their debut album, Days Are Gone, this week—and the hype-fest turned into a coronation. Critics are itching to play the spoiler, but any contrarian impulse I had dissolved when confronted with Days Are Gone, which seems to have swallowed much of what pop culture tossed up in the last, oh, 40 years — everything from the Doobie Brothers to Janet Jackson to third-wave feminism — and spat it back out in the form of ideally catchy four-minute-long songs. There are so many things to like about Haim, but most impressive for me is how, without breaking a sweat, their songs bridge the gulf between rock and hip-hop. In fact, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to the Haim sisters (ages 27, 24, and 21) that such a gulf exists. So we have songs like “My Song 5,†which pairs “Bills, Bills, Billsâ€â€“ and “Say My Nameâ€â€“era Destiny’s Child harmony vocals (and self-assertiveness) with guitars and drums that sound like a pipsqueak garage band covering Led Zeppelin. It’s perfect.
Danny Brown, “Side B [Dope Song]â€
Danny Brown can rap his butt off. Whatever his other merits — including a gourmand’s taste for sex and drugs and a sneaky way of slipping pathos into standard-issue party songs — his greatest talent is simply, well, talent: the full-frontal assault of his rhyme flow, and the subtle beat-play beneath that flashy attack. You can hear it in his nattering, wheezing rapping on “Side B [Dope Song],†from his forthcoming album Old, which officially arrives next week. The song performs a nifty jujitsu: Brown complains about rappers boasting about their old drug-peddling days, while boasting about his own old drug-peddling days — and promising it’s the last time he’ll ever do so. “Take this as a dis, ‘cause this is my last song / Not my last dope song / But my last dope song.â€
Lindi Ortega, “Hard As Thisâ€
Tin Star, the new album by the best country singer from Toronto, Canada, is now streaming on Paste magazine’s site, and it sounds like a winner. Ortega sings concise, witty songs that look back to mid-century Nashville without a trace of alt-country stuffiness. My favorite on Tin Star is the album-opening breakup ballad “Hard As This,†which sounds like a theme for a lost spaghetti Western: full of sulfurous, heavily reverbed guitars and Ortega’s kiss-offs, as dry as the desert landscape the music evokes: “If you need to think / Go read a book.â€Â