Hinds - I Don’t Run

The Guardian 80

(Lucky Number)

Making up what it lacked in technical prowess with sheer charm, Spanish four-piece Hinds’ 2016 debut Leave Me Alone was an outlier in a field of overpolished indie. Throughout, its meandering, raggedly harmonised songs seemed to be permanently teetering on the brink of collapsing. It perhaps shouldn’t have worked, but it did. Their second album has once again been recorded at home in Madrid, but this time they’ve brought in outside collaborators: Strokes producer Gordon Raphael and Grammy-winning John Legend/Perfume Genius engineer Shawn Everett. Quite what this sprinkling of A-list stardust has brought to the party isn’t immediately obvious, as I Don’t Run essentially continues where Leave Me Alone left off. The production values remain determinedly lo-fi, the playing still no-frills, the songs rarely rising above the ramshackle.

Yet despite the frequently shambolic nature of these C86-indebted songs, they’re always warm-sounding. Highlights include the gentle, surf-influenced Linda, the punchy chorus of Tester, and the intertwining vocals of Carlotta Cosials and guitarist Ana Perrote. But spread across 40 minutes, the band’s limitations and the lack of variety begin to grate, never more so than on the plodding I Feel Cold But I Feel More. A plan B for their third album would be nice.

Pitchfork 74

The Spanish duo’s second album displays the superior songcraft of Ana Perrote and Carlotta Cosials as they wade through love’s messy feelings with confidence and exuberance.