The fresh and clean indie pop sounds of Swedish quartet
Hater were cooked up over the course of a single in 2016 and an album, You Tried, that came out in mid-2017. Their jangling guitars, winsome vocals, and alternately sunny and melancholy hooks have a classic feel that, thanks to bands like
Alvvays and now
Hater, are smack up-to-date too. Fire Records certainly thought
Hater were on the right track and signed them up. The first fruits of their relationship is the four-track
Red Blinders EP, and it's a nice calling card. The band has tightened up its sound a little, stripped back some of the jangle, and brought Caroline Landahl's vocals to the forefront. It was a good move, since her singing is one of the main strengths the band brings to the table. Without her, they might tend toward the familiar, but with her, there is so much barely restrained emotion coursing through the melodies that the songs blow past any been-there, done-that reservations with ease. Three of the four songs are classic indie pop tunes, with the exact amount of jangle and melancholy. "Blushing" sounds as much like a hit as anything on
Alvvays' second record, and the sadly bouncy "Penthouse" isn't far behind. The quietly restrained title track is a bit of an outlier, with the band trying some slinky, nocturnal
Fleetwood Mac on for size and finding it fits just right. Måns Leonartsson's guitar work is wonderful, and Landahl delivers a shiver-inducing amount of heavy-lidded sweetness to the bummed-out lyrics. It may not be the ideal direction for
Hater since they do uptempo jangle so well, but it's good that they can stretch and still make it work.
Hater aren't out to reinvent indie pop, but as
Red Blinders shows, they do a really nice job of helping to keep it alive and kicking. ~ Tim Sendra