The title of Haim's debut album apparently refers to the amount of time it took to make. Days Are Gone was refined and tweaked by the Haim sisters under pressure to get it released, but given that it arrives barely a year after the band's debut single, that possibly tells you more about their label's sense of urgency than the LA trio's painstaking perfectionism: we're not exactly dealing with the protracted gestation of Kate Bush's Aerial here.
Perhaps the record company's eagerness is understandable. If such a thing as a racing certainty can exist in the current musical climate, Haim look like one. Three twentysomething sisters, they are blessed not merely with personality – they look good, and give raucously entertaining interviews – but with what an old jazz musician would refer to as "chops". Middle sister Danielle previously worked as a session guitarist, bassist Este has a degree in ethnomusicology, and their four singles to date – pristine and sun-kissed and very Californian – have been lauded by everyone from Jay Z to Mumford & Sons.
The musical pitch laid out in early articles about Haim was that their sound blended the lusciousness of 70s and 80s soft rock with the rhythmic toughness of 90s R&B. That's certainly an appealing idea. Indeed, it's perhaps a little too appealing for its own good: listening to Days Are Gone, you start to conclude it might have had more to do with wishful thinking than Haim's actual sound. Despite the presence of Usher producer Ariel Rechtshaid in the credits, only the admittedly thrilling My Song 5, with its pulverising bassline and bursts of metal guitar in the manner of En Vogue's Free Your Mind, lives up to that advance billing. Elsewhere, there's substantially more 70s and 80s soft rock than 90s R&B; the longest shadow is cast by Fleetwood Mac.
Or, rather, one of Fleetwood Mac: if you want to split hairs, it's worth noting that what Days Are Gone sounds most like isn't Rumours or Tusk so much as Stevie Nicks's solo album Rock a Little, on which the singer gamely adopted the voguish sonics of 1985. Here, as there, we find the crisp chug of damped guitar strings, over juddering, sequenced electronic basslines, moody washes of synthesiser and disjointed, thunderous rhythm tracks that alternately clank and crash. Even in the midst of an 80s revival that now appears to have been going on for considerably longer than the actual 80s did, there's still something very striking about once more hearing what appear to be drums treated with gated reverb, the effect that gave a distinctive stadium-ready boom to the beat of everything from Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA to Duran Duran's Wild Boys. On Days Are Gone, even the lumbering glitterbeat of The Wire has been power-dressed; the ballad Go Slow is punctuated by explosive In the Air Tonight pounding.
It's hard not to think that, in terms of 80s revivalism, going what you might call the full Phil Collins is really upping the ante. No one has dared to tread here, certainly not without a mitigating raised eyebrow or knowing smirk, two things noticeably absent with Haim. Indeed, Days Are Gone sounds genuinely guileless and uncomplicated. Perhaps surprisingly, considering both the band's apparent compulsion to tinker with it and the weight of expectation surrounding it, the album never feels overthought or overwrought: however much agonised sweat went into making it, it sounds breezily unforced.
That it does is largely down to the melodies. Anyone old enough to recall the mid-80s will either find Days Are Gone's sound charmingly nostalgic or an unconscionable reminder of an era of sleeveless, be-mulletted horror best left forgotten; but what seems beyond debate is that Haim's songwriting has a certain kind of glossily depthless pop perfection down pat. It takes bullish confidence to open your debut album with three acclaimed singles – if it subsequently tails off, you're going to look like you have nothing more to offer – but Haim's confidence isn't misplaced. The quality doesn't dip. The choruses always click. Almost everything here sounds like a potential hit. If no one's going to be dazzled by the incisiveness and originality of the words – Haim write the kind of lyrics in which perfidious lovers have lying eyes and there's nothing good in goodbye - it doesn't really matter when they're set to tunes as effortlessly beautiful as those on Honey And I or the title track.
Along with My Song 5, which spikes its En Vogue homage with very current-sounding electronics, Let Me Go – a relentless, house-like pulse decorated with harmonies doused in dub-like echo – suggests there might be more to Haim in the future than mining the past. For now, Days Are Gone makes them seem an increasingly rare thing: a guitar band heralded as a sure thing, who still feel like a sure thing once you've heard their debut album.
