album: The Prettiest Curse — Hinds

words: Eric Bennett

Hinds, the Madrid based quartet, have felt impossibly cool since their debut caught fire amongst the college radio set in early 2016. Their third studio album, The Prettiest Curse, turns their earth-tone indie rock into a thing of flashy chrome. It’s worth noting that while their previous work was produced by Gordon Raphael, who helped the Strokes achieve their metallic tones, Curse was produced by Jen Decilveo, whose prior clients include Bat for Lashes and Albert Hammond Jr. Decilveo pushed them harder than ever before and managed to make them sound more like the Strokes than they ever have, despite Raphael’s influence. Songs like “Boy” and “Burn” feel au courant, but also lean into the notion that this is a band that would like to be—and are—rockstars. The Prettiest Curse sounds like a record that could have been made by the musicians living inside the pages of Meet Me in The Bathroom. 

There has always been a subtle pop influence to their melodies, but on Curse, what was subtext is blown up and made bold. The inimitable voices of Ana Perrote and Carlotta Cosials are shouting down from the top of the mix at every moment of the record. To say their sound has gotten “bigger” doesn’t capture it. The drums boom with every hit, the guitars scream to shatter glass, and the vocals drip with even more of the charm that made the band so popular to begin with. What might sound cluttered and disorganized to some, is focused on showcasing their heightened ambitions. It’s arrangements push boundaries, including more overtly-pop instrumentation than ever before. Curse is full of stompers, like the opener “Good Bad Times” that frames who the band is now. It traces a sketch of picture-perfect romance and how easy it is for things to unravel when you put too much importance and stress onto a relationship: it could never be as strong as you’d need. 

Love is a topic throughout Curse and often finds Hinds trying to persuade exes to give it another go. The only understated moment on the record, “Come Back and Love Me <3”, feels like a nod to their old sound while still including new ones like Spanish guitar. The blown-out “Riding Solo” finds the band grappling with how to be single after a break-up, and touches on how much a shift in your routine can make you feel lost and out of the loop. 

Perhaps the highest point on Curse comes a few tracks in on “Boy.” The most overtly indie pop song of the spread, it has all the playful bounciness of “Let’s Hear it For the Boy,” and is similarly a moment to praise one’s partner. Its chorus hits you like a wall and then burns bright. This effect repeats a few times until the moment halfway when Cosials’ voice is left all alone: she shouts to the sky “all I want is my boy! All I want is my boy!” and we hear the band creeping back in. This adds just enough drama to a song that already would have been great for its riffs alone. 

The shift to such an arena-ready sound was a bold move, and might now feel a little less pertinent since the stadiums these enormous songs are meant to fill remain empty. Despite this, the record feels at home on full volume in any speaker; blow out the stereos in your car while blasting “Boy” and get lost in its hectic arrangement. The Prettiest Curse is a much-needed dose of carefree joy and sick riffs.