''Something to Tell You'' is the second studio album by American pop rock band
Haim
The name ''Haim'' can be a first name or surname originating in the Hebrew language, or deriving from the Old German name '' Haimo''.
Hebrew etymology
Chayyim ( he, חַיִּים ', Classical Hebrew: , Israeli Hebrew: ), also transcribed ''Ha ...
. It was released on July 7, 2017, by
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. It was founded on January 15, 1889, evolving from the A ...
.
The album's lead single, "
Want You Back", was released on May 3, 2017, followed by the release of the promotional single "Right Now".
On May 10, the album cover was revealed, along with the preorder announcement. "
Little of Your Love" was then announced as the second single on June 18, 2017, via
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
. "Nothing's Wrong" was released as the third single on August 21, 2017.
Background and recording
Haim toured for two years to support their previous release, ''
Days Are Gone
''Days Are Gone'' is the debut studio album by American pop rock band Haim, released on September 27, 2013, by Polydor Records. The album spawned six singles: "Forever", " Don't Save Me", " Falling", "The Wire", " If I Could Change Your Mind", a ...
'', the three sisters' 2013 debut album that was met with a great deal of critical and commercial success. With the conclusion of their tour came the beginning of the process of crafting ''Something to Tell You'': "All we knew for two years was wake up, soundcheck, play the show, go to sleep and fit in a slice of pizza at some point. We needed to turn our brains from touring brains back to writing brains. When we came home, we literally got off the bus, took a nap and went right into the studio."
The initial sessions for the album were unfruitful; the band questioned the quality of the songs, wondering if they were on par with the debut album. However, a breakthrough came after the producers of the 2015
Judd Apatow
Judd Apatow (; born December 6, 1967) is an American comedian, director, producer, and screenwriter, best known for his work in comedy and drama films. He is the founder of Apatow Productions, through which he produced and directed the films '' ...
–directed romantic comedy ''
Trainwreck'' asked the band to write a song for the film's soundtrack. "
Little of Your Love
"Little of Your Love" is a song by Haim and the second single off their second album, ''Something to Tell You''. It was released as the follow-up to the single " Want You Back" on June 18, 2017. The music video for the song was directed by Paul ...
", the album's second single, was produced in under a week at the film producers' request, and although it was ultimately not selected for the soundtrack, completing the song gave the band the confidence they needed to write new material for the album.
In the following years, the band developed the album, taking breaks and continuing to perform at various shows and festivals, much of which would further inspire the album. During the production of the album,
Ariel Rechtshaid
Ariel Rechtshaid ( ;) is an American record producer, audio engineer, mixing engineer, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter. His accolades include three Grammy Awards for music production.
Rechtshaid was the lead singer and guitarist of the ska ...
, one of the producers and Danielle Haim's partner, was diagnosed with
testicular cancer
Testicular cancer is cancer that develops in the testicles, a part of the male reproductive system. Symptoms may include a lump in the testicle, or swelling or pain in the scrotum. Treatment may result in infertility.
Risk factors include an u ...
. His diagnosis is cited by the band as the reason for the four-year delay between their first and second album as they halted production while Rechtshaid underwent treatment. The band switched between Valentine Studios, an infrequently used 1970's production facility in
Valley Village
Valley Village is a neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles, located within the San Fernando Valley.
History
Founding
According to Elke Garman, co-president of the Valley Village Homeowners Association in 1991, the history of Valley Village wen ...
(a neighborhood in
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
), and Rechtshaid's home studio.
Promotion
"
Want You Back" was released as the album's first single on May 3, 2017, and was followed a week later by the promotional single, "Right Now". On May 13, the band performed "Want You Back" along with "
Little of Your Love" on ''
Saturday Night Live
''Saturday Night Live'' (often abbreviated to ''SNL'') is an American late-night live television sketch comedy and variety show created by Lorne Michaels and developed by Dick Ebersol that airs on NBC and Peacock. Michaels currently serves a ...
''.
Director
Paul Thomas Anderson
Paul Thomas Anderson (born June 26, 1970), also known by his initials PTA, is an American filmmaker. He made his feature-film debut with ''Hard Eight (film), Hard Eight'' (1996). He found critical and commercial success with ''Boogie Nights'' ( ...
filmed a documentary about the making of the album. Titled ''Valentine'', the film was first screened in July 2017, before being officially uploaded to the internet that September.
Anderson would go on to direct music videos for three of the album's tracks "Right Now", "
Little of Your Love", and a live version of "Night So Long". Anderson became interested in the group after learning that the sisters were the daughters of one of his former art teachers.
They made their first UK appearance at
BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend
BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend (R1BW) (previously known as One Big Weekend, for 2012 as Radio 1's Hackney Weekend, and for 2018 as BBC Music's Biggest Weekend) is a British music festival run by the BBC's radio station. It is held once a year, in a ...
on May 27, performing "Want You Back" and "Right Now" as part of their set.
The trio also embarked on their second headlining tour, the
Sister Sister Sister Tour
The Sister Sister Sister Tour is the second headlining concert tour by American band Haim, in support of their sophomore album, ''Something to Tell You'' (2017). The tour began on April 3, 2018 in Portland, Oregon at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert ...
which begun on April 3, 2018.
Critical reception
''Something to Tell You'' has received a generally positive reception from
music critics
Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on w ...
. At
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has an
average
In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...
score of 69 out of 100 based on 30 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable" reception.
Writing for ''
Pitchfork
A pitchfork (also a hay fork) is an agricultural tool with a long handle and two to five tines used to lift and pitch or throw loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves.
The term is also applied colloquially, but inaccurately, to th ...
'', Jenn Pelly said, "No other rock band in popular music (an anomalous statement already) has mixed styles so seamlessly—rattling and gliding from one hook to another...Haim's latticed arrangements and heavily percussive melodies make their music fly."
Pelly as well as several other reviewers stressed the influence of
Stevie Nicks
Stephanie Lynn Nicks (born May 26, 1948) is an American singer, songwriter, and producer known for her work with the band Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist.
After starting her career as a duo with her then-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham, releasi ...
and other 1970s and '80s rock; in the ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'', Mikael Wood said the album "makes you believe that rock might have a future," bearing "the polished sound of vintage
Fleetwood Mac
Fleetwood Mac are a British-American rock band, formed in London in 1967. Fleetwood Mac were founded by guitarist Peter Green, drummer Mick Fleetwood and guitarist Jeremy Spencer, before bassist John McVie joined the line-up for their epony ...
and the
Eagles
Eagle is the common name for many large birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of genera, some of which are closely related. Most of the 68 species of eagle are from Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, just ...
, and here the sisters continue to rely on guitars and the like at a moment when many of their peers have little use for them." In ''
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...
'', Jon Dolan said, "You can hear the studied sense of craft all over ''Something to Tell You''...These songs don't always explode with the sunny ebullience of the first LP, but the melodies, beats and ideas are layered and piled high."
In ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', Kitty Empire writes, "Haim really know what they are doing. There are digressions to kill for here, what you might once have called middle eights, indefatigable melodies, and weird little noises – a horse neigh and a seagull coda on Want You Back, a fax machine on Found It in Silence, the gasping on Nothing's Wrong – to keep you clamping your headphones to your ears in delight."
Commercial performance
''Something to Tell You'' debuted at number seven on the US
''Billboard'' 200 with 32,000
album-equivalent unit
The album-equivalent unit, or album equivalent, is a measurement unit in music industry to define the consumption of music that equals the purchase of one album copy. This consumption includes streaming and song downloads in addition to traditi ...
s, of which 26,000 were pure album sales.
It also debuted at No. 2 on the
UK Albums Chart
The Official Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales and (from March 2015) audio streaming in the United Kingdom. It was published for the first time on 22 July 1956 and is compiled every week by the Official Charts C ...
, selling 18,319 copies in its first week.
Track listing
Notes
*
signifies an additional producer
Personnel
Credits adapted from
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...
and album’s
liner notes
Liner notes (also sleeve notes or album notes) are the writings found on the sleeves of LP record albums and in booklets that come inserted into the compact disc jewel case or the equivalent packaging for cassettes.
Origin
Liner notes are desce ...
.
Haim
*
Alana Haim
Alana Mychal Haim (born December 15, 1991) is an American musician and actress. She is best known as a member of the pop rock band Haim, along with her two older sisters Este and Danielle, where she performs piano, guitar and vocals. In 2020, t ...
–
vocals
Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...
,
guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...
,
percussion
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...
,
keyboards
Keyboard may refer to:
Text input
* Keyboard, part of a typewriter
* Computer keyboard
** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping
** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware
Music
* Musi ...
*
Danielle Haim
Danielle Sari Haim (born February 16, 1989) is an American musician. She is the lead guitarist and vocalist of the pop rock band Haim, which also consists of her two sisters, Este Haim and Alana Haim. Danielle also serves as the group's drummer i ...
– vocals , guitar ,
drums
A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...
, percussion ,
Hi-hat
A hi-hat (hihat, high-hat, etc.) is a combination of two cymbals and a pedal, all mounted on a metal stand. It is a part of the standard drum kit used by drummers in many styles of music including rock, pop, jazz, and blues. Hi-hats consist o ...
, synthesizer , glass bottle
* Este Haim – vocals ,
bass guitar
The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...
, percussion
Musicians
*
Rostam Batmanglij
Rostam Batmanglij ( fa, رستم باتمانقلیچ, ; born November 28, 1983), known mononymously as Rostam, is an American record producer, musician, singer, songwriter, and composer. He was a founding member of the band Vampire Weekend, whos ...
–
acoustic guitar
An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...
, drum programming ,
electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gui ...
, harmonizer ,
Moog Bass ,
piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...
,
rhythm guitar
In music performances, rhythm guitar is a technique and role that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with other instruments from the rhythm section (e.g., drum kit, bass guitar ...
,
synthesizer
A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...
*
Matt Bauder –
saxophone
The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to pr ...
* Andrew Bulbrook –
violin
The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...
*
Lenny Castro
Lenny or Lennie may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Lenny (given name), a list of people and fictional characters
* Lennie (surname), a list of people
* Lenny (singer) (born 1993), Czech songwriter
Arts and entertainment Music
* ''L ...
–
conga
The conga, also known as tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed drum from Cuba. Congas are staved like barrels and classified into three types: quinto (lead drum, highest), tres dos or tres golpes (middle), and tumba or salidor (lowest). ...
s
*
Devonté Hynes –
DX7 electric piano
*
Jim-E Stack
James Harmon Stack, (born January 21, 1992) known professionally as Jim-E Stack, is an American musician, songwriter, record producer, and DJ born in San Francisco, CA, and based in Los Angeles, CA. His solo releases have featured Bon Iver, Empr ...
– keyboards
* Tommy King – bass synth ,
CP70 ,
organ , piano , synthesizer
*
Greg Leisz
Gregory Brian Leisz ( ; born September 18, 1949) is an American musician. He is a songwriter, recording artist, and producer. He plays guitar, dobro, mandolin, lap steel and pedal steel guitar.
Biography
Leisz grew up in the garage band cu ...
– guitar ,
pedal steel guitar
The pedal steel guitar is a Console steel guitar, console-type of steel guitar with pedals and knee levers that change the pitch of certain strings to enable playing more varied and complex music than any previous steel guitar design. Like all s ...
, slide guitar
*
George Lewis Jr. – guitar
*
Roger Manning
Roger Manning is a New York City based singer-songwriter who plays an aggressive acoustic style of music. Manning, along with a small handful of other artists, composed the original New York City anti-folk scene.
On February 6, 1985, Manning w ...
– synthesizer
* Serena McKinney – violin
* David Moyer – saxophone
*
Nico Muhly
Nico Asher Muhly (; born August 26, 1981) is an American contemporary classical music composer and arranger who has worked and recorded with both classical and pop musicians. A prolific composer, he has composed for many notable symphony orchestras ...
–
prepared piano
A prepared piano is a piano that has had its sounds temporarily altered by placing bolts, screws, mutes, rubber erasers, and/or other objects on or between the strings. Its invention is usually traced to John Cage's dance music for ''Bacchanale' ...
and
strings
String or strings may refer to:
*String (structure), a long flexible structure made from threads twisted together, which is used to tie, bind, or hang other objects
Arts, entertainment, and media Films
* ''Strings'' (1991 film), a Canadian anim ...
*
Mike Olsen –
cello
The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...
*
Owen Pallett
Michael James Owen Pallett (born September 7, 1979) is a Canadian composer, violinist, keyboardist, and vocalist. Under their erstwhile moniker of Final Fantasy, Pallett won the 2006 Polaris Music Prize for the album ''He Poos Clouds''. Pallet ...
–
viola
The viola ( , also , ) is a string instrument that is bow (music), bowed, plucked, or played with varying techniques. Slightly larger than a violin, it has a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of ...
*
Ariel Rechtshaid
Ariel Rechtshaid ( ;) is an American record producer, audio engineer, mixing engineer, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter. His accolades include three Grammy Awards for music production.
Rechtshaid was the lead singer and guitarist of the ska ...
– acoustic guitar , background vocals ,
celeste , guitar , keyboards ,
marimba
The marimba () is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Below each bar is a resonator pipe that amplifies particular harmonics of its sound. Compared to the xylophone, the timbre ...
, organ , percussion , piano , rhythm guitar , synthesizer ,
vocoder
A vocoder (, a portmanteau of ''voice'' and ''encoder'') is a category of speech coding that analyzes and synthesizes the human voice signal for audio data compression, multiplexing, voice encryption or voice transformation.
The vocoder was ...
*
Buddy Ross
Buddy Ross (born Josiah Sherman; March 4, 1983) is an American record producer, musical artist, keyboard player, songwriter, engineer and mixer. He is best known for his work with Frank Ocean, having worked across Ocean's critically acclaimed albu ...
–
dulcimer
The word dulcimer refers to two families of musical string instruments.
Hammered dulcimers
The word ''dulcimer'' originally referred to a trapezoidal zither similar to a psaltery whose many strings are struck by handheld "hammers". Variants of ...
,
Fender Rhodes
The Rhodes piano (also known as the Fender Rhodes piano) is an electric piano invented by Harold Rhodes, which became popular in the 1970s. Like a conventional piano, the Rhodes generates sound with keys and hammers, but instead of strings, th ...
, keyboards , percussion , synthesizer
* Gus Seyffert – percussion
* Ruud Wiener – Simmons Silicon Mallet
Technical personnel
* Chris Allgood – assistant mastering engineer
* Rostam Batmanglij – additional production ,
engineer
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...
,
producer , string arrangements
*
BloodPop
Michael Tucker (born August 15, 1990), known professionally as BloodPop (stylized as BloodPop®), is an American musician, record producer, and songwriter. He has previously used the monikers Blood Diamonds, Blood, and Michael Diamond. He is kn ...
– additional production
* Martin Cooke – assistant engineer
*
Rich Costey
Rich may refer to:
Common uses
* Rich, an entity possessing wealth
* Rich, an intense flavor, color, sound, texture, or feeling
** Rich (wine), a descriptor in wine tasting
Places United States
* Rich, Mississippi, an unincorporated commun ...
–
mixing
* Laura Coulson –
photography
Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed ...
* John DeBold – engineer
* Scott Desmarais – assistant mixing engineer
* Robin Florent – assistant mixing engineer
* Nicolas Fournier – assistant engineer
*
Dave Fridmann
David Lawrence Fridmann is an American record producer and musician.
Career
From 1990 onwards he co-produced most releases by Mercury Rev and The Flaming Lips. Other bands he has worked with include Weezer, Saxon Shore, Neon Indian, Wolf Gang, ...
– mixing
* Chris Galland – mixing engineer
* Michael Harris – engineer
* Chris Kasych – engineer
*
Emily Lazar
Emily B. Lazar is an American mastering engineer. She is the founder, president, and chief mastering engineer of The Lodge, an audio mastering facility that has operated in New York City's Greenwich Village since 1997. She won a Grammy Award for ...
–
mastering
* George Lewis Jr. – producer
* Ted Lovett –
creative director
A creative director (or creative supervisor) is a person who makes high-level creative decisions and, with those decisions, oversees the creation of creative assets such as advertisements, products, events, or logos. Creative director positions ar ...
*
Manny Marroquin
Manny Marroquin (born September 21, 1971) is an American mixing engineer.Daley, Dan (May 2005).Manny Marroquin. ''Sound on Sound''. Retrieved February 10, 2007 He has received ten Grammy awards for his professional audio work.
Life and career
M ...
– mixing
* Serena McKinney –
string arrangements
*
Rob Orton – mixing
* Ariel Rechtshaid – drum programming , engineer , producer , programming , string arrangements
*
Nick Rowe – engineer
* David Schiffman – engineer
* Gus Seyffert – engineer
Charts
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Certifications
Release history
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
2017 albums
Haim (band) albums
Columbia Records albums
Albums produced by Ariel Rechtshaid
Albums produced by Rostam Batmanglij
Albums recorded at Electro-Vox Recording Studios