Hinds
Leave Me Alone

Not even time to digest the aftermath of the holidays and process the last appreciated albums of the end of 2015 (Grimes and Archy Marshall above all), and already the record market frantically resumes its cycle from the early days of 2016.

Among the first releases of 2016 worth noting is the debut of the Hinds, a female quartet from Madrid.

To be clear right away: the four show they know their respective instruments in a rather rudimentary way, even going beyond the concept of punk attitude and naïveté. A comment on YouTube reads something like "it’s like progressive never happened", but this doesn't exclude other merits.

"Leave Me Alone" is an album that exudes instinctiveness, simplicity, fun, and healthy goofing around. A blatantly summer album, released who knows for what record logic in January. The cited and explicit influences from the first seconds are the garage of the Black Lips and the indie-jangle pop of the good Mac DeMarco. The sound of the 12 tracks is essentially a cross between these latter, with a pop side not too hidden and a recording that touches low fidelity. One would say garage-pop.

However, theirs is a lo-fi too clean and “glossy” to be labeled as such. And it's a garage too little angry to satisfy genre purists, and upon closer listening, it isn't. The album in question is genuinely and naively sunny and carefree.

A large part of the album's appeal is given by the alternation and vocal overlays between Anna and Carlotta (both also on guitar), somewhat like Girlpool but more unruly and with an English pronunciation that inevitably betrays their origin.

38 minutes of guitars sometimes languid and surf ("Warts" and "Solar Gap") and in other cases more energetic ("Castigadas En El Granero"), simple and effective riffs ("Garden"), tracks that can capture you from the first listen ("Bamboo" and "Chili Town", the best of the lot) and others that more attempt the "introspection" card ("And I Will Send Your Flowers Back").

With the awareness of their limits, without pretensions and without unnecessary frills, the Hinds package a debut album, fun and amused, that reflects their live approach (it's no coincidence they played festivals like SXSW and Glastonbury with only a few singles released) and the understandable expressive urgency.

To close with an overused image: if it's undeniable that the road to reach their sources of inspiration is long, it cannot be denied that the path undertaken by the group is the right direction.