Rating: 8.0 March 10th PNKSLM Buy: iTunes
Despite having only been a band for about a year, Hater’s interpretation of indie pop is equally refreshing and devastating. At its core, You Tried is a proper debut that pins guitar jangles to pensive dream pop, but it also finds the Malmö quartet pulling off rifts of moody post-punk (“Always Hard To Get By”), 60s-style classic rock (“Cry Later”), and erratic homages to Dying To Say This To You (“Heavy Hearts”), and doing so with ease. It’s potent and well-paced, and a lot of the intimacy stems from Caroline Landahl’s voice and the way it sticks to melodies that are layered with raw configurations of grit, anxiety, and longing. On “Had It All”, she’s committed to turning lovesick thoughts into a glimmer of hope, and then on the title track “You Tried”, she’s lost in a wave of lived-in pain — singing over aqueous riff-etry while gutting you from the inside out.
Best Tracks: “You Tried”, “Had It All”, “Carpet”, “Mental Haven”