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Hater

Pop / Sweden (Malmö)
Hater
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Hater

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Alvvays, Slowdive, Deerhunter

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Shoegaze pop

" A hazy, cool combo of indie pop and shoegaze "

Perhaps understandably, given events of the last few years, Malmo’s Hater have turned a shade darker. A little more intense. Driven even. While the quartet’s excellent debut album ‘You Tried’ – one of 2017’s most underrated records – was all warm, jangly guitars and shimmering melodies, new LP ‘Sincere’ abandons dreamy indie-pop for a noisier, fuzzed out haze that borrows from a different late-80s genre: shoegaze. My Bloody Valentine and early Slowdive are obvious touchstones; so too contemporaries such as Deerhunter. Yet their music remains arrestingly captivating and downright cool – grittier squalls of noise and drawn-out solos suit them well.

Take opening track ‘Something’ – a motoric groove and piercing guitar notes provide the perfect showcase for singer Caroline Landahl’s airy, detached vocals, the slow crescendo of the chorus an early high. Or the breakneck drama of ‘Far From A Mind’. But their bright, janglewave sensibilities occasionally poke through the fog like a ray of sunshine. ‘Bad Luck’ is gloriously sultry and uplifting, while ‘Summer Turns To Heartburn’ is, despite that title, as close to a ballad as they get here, a slow, glittering number that sounds like an instant classic.

Since ‘You Tried’, they’ve toured the world and racked up numerous appearances at prestigious festivals such as End of the Road, Eurosonic, Roskilde, and SXSW. Acclaim has followed from the likes of NPR, Stereogum, and BBC Radio 1. Perhaps without Covid they’d be huge already, rightly lauded as one of Europe’s best indie bands – ‘Sincere’ proves that’s a title they richly deserve, and a future that’s surely inevitable.