Albums of the week: Haim, Loyle Carner, Aitch and James McMurtry

I Quit

Haim

(Polydor)

Letting go of what does not serve you sounds like glib advice, until you have cause to enact it. I Quit, Haim’s fourth album, finds the Grammy-nominated sister act intent on seizing the day – and a few nights – with singing guitarist Danielle Haim having split from her romantic partner, the band’s longtime producer, Ariel Rechtshaid. A handful of tunes churn through the aftermath; the rest revel in new-found singledom – something all the sisters had in common while recording. Head-tossing album opener Gone interpolates George Michael’s Freedom! ’90, while Blood on the Street is a boxy country blues that counts the cost in a more traditional form, unleashing one of many succinct but liquid guitar solos from Danielle that periodically enliven the record.

The LA band’s music is often more invested in lightening the load than brooding, and never more so than on Take Me Back, a breezy slice of nostalgia for teenage shenanigans. If this band – who really can be all eras to all people – sometimes invoke Sheryl Crow too readily, or import some baggy beats for little musical gain, they are never better than when impersonating a terrific yacht rock/R&B act, as on the more widescreen Relationships.

Kitty Empire

Hopefully!

Loyle Carner

(EMI)

Rap at its best sounds completely unmediated. You won’t hear the effort of crafting bar-shaped sentences, the hours spent searching for the perfect rhyme. Rap technique is called “flow” because it should be immense and inevitable, a river surging to the sea. Loyle Carner’s flow is impeccable. Even when the 30-year-old Londoner isn’t rapping, which is often on Hopefully!, he’s singing in a style so intimate it’s near uncomfortable. Behind, his brilliant band supplies keys and contemplative guitar over warm bass with jazzy percussion or molasses-slow beats.

Picking individual songs for praise seems decadent, although In My Mind has a uniquely offhand genius. Carner says that rapping is a “facade”, whereas singing reveals him. Yet rap remains the most exposing lyrical art form. There are too many words, and you can’t hide behind them all.And even as he retreats from rap’s lyrical density to something more hazy or impressionistic, Carner’s sharp thoughts on parenting, introspection and identity are everywhere. If a great song holds up a mirror to the self, then this album is a funhouse, every surface unveiling another enchanting aspect.

Damien Morris

4

Aitch

(NQ Records)

On his second studio album, Manchester rapper Aitch is homing in on the talent teased in his searing diss of Central Cee earlier this year. Though the 25-year-old made his name in the chart-climbing realm of pop-rap, with Ed Sheeran collaborations and a stage appearance with Coldplay, Aitch started out as a grime MC. 4, a nod to his postcode, deftly charts that ascent with braggadocio and homage to where he came from.

With name drops of the Gallaghers and the Stone Roses and a Nas sample (on M40), he aligns himself with both Manchester greatness and a global hip-hop lineage. There are still those fizzy, bawdy tracks he’s best known for (the flirty banter of Anne-Marie collab LUV?, for example), and lyrics about how much he enjoys giving and receiving oral sex, but Aitch has a desire to be taken seriously: as he offers on Bounce, “you ain’t gotta like me but gotta respect me”. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but hefty production and the slick, charismatic way with words make for a joyous ride.

Tara Joshi

The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy

James McMurtry

(New West)

Texan troubadour James McMurtry is not from the songwriting school that demands confessions dredged from personal experience. Instead, he’s a short-story writer with a guitar, pulling cameos from the losing end of the Great Society – a homeless truck driver, a horse farmer gone bankrupt. Nonetheless this 11th album, his first in four years, comes shadowed by autobiography and the death in 2021 of his father, Larry, a novelist celebrated for Lonesome Dove, The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment and more.

The title track describes a recurring visitation from his father’s dementia-stricken last days, while the album cover borrows a drawing by counter-culture icon Ken Kesey, a frequent visitor to the McMurtry home. James’s own 60-odd years haunt the bluesy South Texas Lawman, whose sheriff laments “I used to be young and getting old don’t fit me”.

With his longstanding band behind him, the album has a rockier feel than its predecessor, though, mercifully, only a cover of Jon Dee Graham’s Laredo, a tale of opioid abuse, gets the full guitar blitzkrieg. More comfortably paced is Annie, where Sarah Jarosz adds banjo and harmonies to McMurtry’s salty bark, while a cover of Kris Kristofferson’s Broken Freedom Song offers a tribute to an early hero. Fearless stuff.

Neil Spencer

One to watch: Joalin

Joalin Loukamaa was supposed to be an artist of the body. Her parents are professional dancers, and from childhood she followed their footwork. Growing up in Finland, Spain and Mexico (she speaks four languages fluently, “Finnish, Spanish, English… plus when I’m asleep, gibberish!”) Joalin seemed a perfect fit for Simon Fuller’s global-pop group Now United. She joined at 16 as a backing dancer. It didn’t last. “I realised I hated it,” she recalls jovially. “I wanted to be the centre of attention.”

Joalin got her wish when she moved back home and starred in two seasons of Finland’s Survivor reality show. Although her classmates had once laughed at her when she sang at a school audition, Finnish producer Jori Sjöroos encouraged Joalin to develop her vocal artistry, and she debuted with 2022’s excellent mad-love single Angelito, floating her breathy, breezy voice over honeyed Europop-gone-reggaeton – a ludicrously catchy collision of styles. She followed that with a featured turn on a local rap track that became a summer hit.

Now 23, her superb first mix tape, Camaleón (chameleon), named for her intercontinental upbringing, always shedding skins between “sophisticated, shy” Finland and “noisy, social” Mexico. Although, ironically, its quietest song is the Mexican one, El Dolor Es Lento (Slow Pain). Each track shimmers with the cool heat of Joalin’s alluring vocals, slipping in and out of Spanish, smuggling her rawest feelings into the sweetest melodies.

Damien Morris

Photographs by Terrence O’Connor/Felicity Ingram/Jahnay Tennai/PR