Review Summary: Fun engaging beach rock listen, even if it doesn't do anything new
A band’s debut album is normally a tough thing to review, but I think it’s important to remember that this is the band’s first full length effort. Hinds (originally known as Deers) is an all-female band that hail from Madrid, but Leave Me Alone features a sound that is distinctly California beach rock inspired, so much so that you wouldn’t be able to tell that they were from anywhere else unless someone informed you of it.
Leave Me Alone is comprised of 12 tracks and, clocking in at only 38 minutes, makes sure not to over stay its welcome. The first half of the album is fun, upbeat, and sloppy -- in a good way. Leave Me Alone feels very organic (and drunken) through every track here, even in the instrumental “Solar Gap”. The opening track “Garden” perfectly shows what this album has to offer, from the simple guitar chords to the laid back vocals from the two vocalists respectively. The double vocalists are easily the best part of the album, featured either separately or singing together, but unlike other bands that use two vocalists, even when singing together you feel each unique expression from each lead. In many parts where both vocalists show up during the verses, each can be heard singing different parts, but this is again where the laid back and sloppy, organic feel comes into play, which makes each stand out in its own unique way. Each track is so fun and easy to listen to that it’s hard to not enjoy the drunken fun that the band is having on the first half of this album with tracks like “Garden”, “Warts”, “Easy”, and “Castigadas En El Granero”.
But then we have to face the issue with the second half of the album and Leave Me Alone overall: it doesn’t do anything new. This is the band’s first album and the second half’s lack of change shows the overall power of the song writing of the group. This isn’t* to say that any of the songs are bad, they just start to bleed together without anything interesting and/or new in every song. The best track on the second half is “And I Will Bring Your Flowers Back”, and that is only because it is the only track that actually does something new -- it’s a slow, almost ballad type of song that gives that little extra kick late into the album.
Overall, Leave Me Alone is a great starting point for a new band that still has some kinks to work out. With better song writing, tighter playing, or its own unique personality outside of party girls, this band could be amazing, and it makes me excited for their next album. But with all these issues bringing down the album, it only stays great, and doesn’t end up being amazing.
