Hinds - I Don't Run

Spanish group Hind's second album, I Don't Run, just out, is a more mature update on their first, Leave Me Alone, from a couple of years back. If you liked that, you'll probably like this, and the opposite also applies. The guitars have conversations, in a similar way as the girls' harmonies and vocal rejoinders do, in that determinedly babyish way that people in their teens and twenties sometimes have, (a grumpy middle-aged man speaks), of their determination not to grow up until they decide to. They rattle away throughout with consistent vim and vigour, a girl band in the mode of the early Libertines or Kings Of Leon, their boy-band equivalents.

This is probably my own personal issue with the record and the band. The melodies and twists and turns are fine but the irritation factor, for those not in their age bracket,  is certainly always there. It's rather like an evening out on the town with people thirty years younger than you, invigorating and energetic but liable to descend into a series of downed group shots at the bar or someone putting four consecutive Spice Girls on the pub jukebox.

So while I'm glad to have Hinds around as they have better taste than that and would never go for the second option, I'd still be concerned that one of them might throw up at some point in the evening, and being on the edge of an ongoing conversations about young peoples' romantic entanglements is never quite as involving for you as for them, as you have a lot less hormones  and are probably concerned about the state you'll be in at work tomorrow. A seven out of ten record from me, but of course it's plainly evident as I suggested myself, that these are the words of a fifty two year old man. If I was still twenty, it would probably get nine. But I suspect the band have yet to write their killer song, (I Feel Cold But I Feel More, posted here, is the closest they get), or make the album they are capable of. I hope both will come further along the line. meanwhile, back to my cocoa!