Earlier this week, the three Californian sisters, who first came to the attention of UK music lovers way back in mid 2012 after their positively received EP earned them a support slot on Florence and the Machine's UK tour, found themselves in an album chart battle that was branded one of the closest chart battles in years. This came after the BBC announced that the bands debut album, 'Days Are Gone', was just 28 copies shy of Justin Timberlake's 'The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2' leading up to the announcement of this weeks No.1 album - a US dominated battle that would go down to The Wire (pardon the pun).
Haim, whose popularity in the UK has done nothing but grow in recent months due to their many flawless festival sets at the likes of Reading and Glastonbury gaining praise from all over, (sets that also resulted in them being crowned this summers best breakthrough act by NME readers) have now achieved their first UK Number 1 in the form of their debut album - an achievement that sits quite nicely next to their recent BBC Sound of 2013 win that came earlier this year.
Although the album has so far shocked as many fans as it has pleased, due to it's slightly more poppy sound, (a sound that doesn't resonate through the bands usual rock 'n' roll live shows) Danielle, Este and Alana have single handedly managed to achieve something that this years other new NME hailed bands (Peace and Palma Violets) haven't.
Did the band purposely choose a more easy on the ear approach for a chance of more commercial success? If they did, then it obviously worked, but to be honest, seeing as female musicians who produce music as good as this are hard to come by these days, I think we'd be very wrong to put them on a plane back to the US.
You can buy the album yourselves from https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/days-are-gone/id681119678?affId=1930871 or see it performed live on the following dates :
Dec 4 - Norwich @ UEA
Dec 5 - Birmingham @ Birmingham HMV Institute
Dec 6 - Leeds @ Leeds Metropolitan University
Dec 8 - Manchester @ Manchester Ritz
Dec 9 - London @ HMV London Forum
Dec 10 - London @ HMV London Forum
Dec 12 - Glasgow @ Glasgow ABC
Dec 13 - Dublin @ The Academy
Haim, whose popularity in the UK has done nothing but grow in recent months due to their many flawless festival sets at the likes of Reading and Glastonbury gaining praise from all over, (sets that also resulted in them being crowned this summers best breakthrough act by NME readers) have now achieved their first UK Number 1 in the form of their debut album - an achievement that sits quite nicely next to their recent BBC Sound of 2013 win that came earlier this year.
Although the album has so far shocked as many fans as it has pleased, due to it's slightly more poppy sound, (a sound that doesn't resonate through the bands usual rock 'n' roll live shows) Danielle, Este and Alana have single handedly managed to achieve something that this years other new NME hailed bands (Peace and Palma Violets) haven't.
Did the band purposely choose a more easy on the ear approach for a chance of more commercial success? If they did, then it obviously worked, but to be honest, seeing as female musicians who produce music as good as this are hard to come by these days, I think we'd be very wrong to put them on a plane back to the US.
You can buy the album yourselves from https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/days-are-gone/id681119678?affId=1930871 or see it performed live on the following dates :
Dec 4 - Norwich @ UEA
Dec 5 - Birmingham @ Birmingham HMV Institute
Dec 6 - Leeds @ Leeds Metropolitan University
Dec 8 - Manchester @ Manchester Ritz
Dec 9 - London @ HMV London Forum
Dec 10 - London @ HMV London Forum
Dec 12 - Glasgow @ Glasgow ABC
Dec 13 - Dublin @ The Academy
Haim fought off stiff US competition in the form of Justin Timberlake to take the No.1 spot |
George Henry King
www.twitter.com/georgehenryking