New Haim Streaming

Haim's "Days are Gone" is now streaming at NPR Music.

HAIM discovered its specific superpower: the ability to channel influences most listeners recognize within a fresh, personal sound. It's easy to play the game of references on Days Are Gone. "Honey & I" re-imagines Fleetwood Mac as a duo with just Lindsey and Christine; "The Wire" throws its Shania Twain guitar riff against a wall built by The Bangles. The wonderfully moody "My Song 5" imagines a perfect union of Nirvanaand TLC. "Running If You Call My Name" runs up that hill in the Kate Bush song and finds Tom Petty free-falling on the other side. And so on, until the jukebox is exhausted.

But the Top 40 machine that HAIM loves and elevates is never exhausted, because it's powered by the dreams of generations of boys and girls — especially girls, so many of whom figure out what they think of love, loss and independence by absorbing and developing their own reinterpretations of the songs the radio feeds them. The lyrics on Days Are Gone are all about the trial and error involved in realizing that dreams designed by others (parents, boyfriends, songwriters) may not fit your growing individual frame. Danielle Haim's lead vocals always sound like a thought process, interrupted by sighs and guttural stops and starts; her sisters shore her up with harmonies and funky rhythms, but even within the sleek production, their playing has an imperfect edge that makes it all the more accessible. Days Are Gone brings the revenge of the listening girl, the one whose passionate engagement made pop possible in the first place. In front of the microphone, these sisters retell pop's central stories in a language that's true to actual young women like themselves.