Album Review: Hinds - Leave Me Alone

★★★★☆

According to Spanish alt rockers, there are ‘twelve faces of love’. You can hear all of them in each track of their long awaited debut album Leave Me Alone.

Though fear not, these aren’t diva ballads, there are no angels providing choir backing and there’s definitely no power reach hand movements needed for the chorus.

These twelve faces of love are flirtatious, brattish, cheeky, wild and broken. Exploding from a shaken can of cheap beer. Though they’re undeniably a snippet into the minds of Hinds.

Their shit, their rules.

Over the past year, bloggers jumped on the Madrid quartet, blowing them on the web and using their gigs as holy rituals.

Last year’s single ‘Garden’ gets the party started. Drenched in reverb and tiltering on a simple rhythm that moves into a moody groove, it sets the tone for a shambling, joyous guitar album.

The tracks move into each other with drunken swagger, wildly demanding attention but at the same time running the risk of falling. It is this slight vulnerability that makes the music of Hinds such fun.

Jangly fan favourite ‘Chili Town’, somehow stays slow-moving like it was written for an old Western town saloon. Their barbed hook chants ‘all I’m asking for, is you to make a move’ as the girl’s vocals clamber over each other.

Flooded with charisma, Hinds fuzzy garage pop is always sun kissed. Early surf track from their days as The Deers, ‘Bamboo’ rattles along with a metallic undertone and off-kilter melodies.

Latest single 'San Diego' bops with an out of sync 'TA DA DA DA DA'. Tinged with 60's pop sensibilities, its juicy rhythm is infectiously fun to shake your ponytail to.

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Th seductive purrs on melancholic ‘And I Will Send Your Flowers Back’ are sad but swooning. A tender middle to their garage rock exterior.

With their Spanish accents and spontaneous nature, Hinds’ frenzied lyricism requires a keen ear. The upbeat, sweet harmonies of ‘Warts’ almost disguise the tale they’re quite simply spinning about a woman with warts.

Translating into ‘Punished at the Barn’, ‘Castigadas En El Granero’, is a burst of high energy with sonic riffs and a killer hook. Then you realise that the killer hook shrills ‘And all I see is a big cow’ and that the entire track is about causing trouble in a barn and eating too much corn, and what's not to love about that.

They introduce vibrant characters; the drunk texter, the bad boys, the friends who are sharks… who by the end seem all too familiar. Hinds playful ambience make them ridiculously lovable; the best friends you want to hold your hair after a messy one, because you know they’d do it for you too.

Acoustic ballad ‘I’ll Be Your Man’ pays ode to obvious companionship. Their ukulele sweetly washes away gender archetypes, declaring ‘I could be your baby, but I’ll be your man’.

Closer ‘Walking Home’ shakes like a fuzzy fiesta with jubilant melodies and washed out vocals. Replicating a listener’s woozy delight of whiplash.

'Leave Me Alone' rollercoasters through the different kinds of love in all of its messy glory. It pounces with sass and is bluntly to the point.

All in all Hinds debut is a shambolic, joyous, frantic, lovable and wonderful mess.

Hinds means female deer, and this girl gang have that kick if you get too close and piss them off.

Leave Me Alone is out 8th January via NPR

Catch Hinds on tour across the UK next month

Album Review: Hinds - Leave Me Alone

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