Anyone else noticed that the mastering on this is shit? My copy is compressed / maxed all to fuck and distorts. Everytime it comes on on shuffle on my iPod among other albums, it nearly destroys my headphones.

I did some googling and found this is a common complaint with this album. WTF were they thinking? Way to make a decent album problematic to listen to.

I think the mastering is perfectly appropriate.

Do you find that it is extremely loud, sometimes to the point of distortion? The EPs sound great, but I am finding with the album, I have to dial the knob on my stereo way down to listen to it. Ditto on the iPod. I experienced similar problems with Kanye West's last two albums, but I find this a much worse case. I thought maybe for the iPod, I might have to buy into that whole "mastered for iTunes" version shit, but I find the album has the same overblown delivery on other systems.

I mean I really just don't like them at all and think it's a crappy sound for crappy music and don't really care.

I've never listened to the whole album. Listening to it on Spotify for a minute just now, it didn't sound all that loud. I can't bring myself to listen to a whole song by them, though.

I do find that there's a wider discrepancy now between the loudness of some of the more mainstream pop stuff and some of the kind of vintage-sounding, anti-loudness current indie stuff. Some of the worst/loudest sounding stuff to me is The Flaming Lips. Pretty much everything they've done since Yoshimi has been super loud and compressed. Fridmann kind of did the same thing to Low on the two albums he produced for them, I thought.

I personally really disliked the whole production aesthetic of the last Kanye album and felt almost totally alone in that respect. I haven't even bothered with Yeezus yet.

Ah, fair enough.

I believe you are correct about the whole loudness of mainstream pop stuff thing. It's mind-boggling, though. I mean, I know people like to listen to glossy, compressed pop/pap shit, but surely they can't enjoy it when it sounds this distorted and bad? Do they just not notice? Or is the average John Doe just decked out with more capable, powerful stereo equipment than I with killer drivers or something that don't distort when albums are crushed to shit and jacked up in the mastering process? My sister listens to all that slick, auto-tuned, bassy pop and hip hop stuff, and she sure as hell doesn't have any decent gear.

I think I'm with the Drinkster--I can't believe how bad it is.

Considering the glowing reviews, I expected to find SOMETHING I like, but no. Not for me.

I can't really defend the album on an artistic level. There is only one song on it that I really dig that wasn't on the EPs.

If I were to recommend anything by Haim, it would be the following tracks, and not the album Days Are Gone:

Forever (Forever EP)
Don't Save Me (Don't Save Me EP)
The Wire (Days Are Gone LP)

There you go. Three great, catchy tunes out of an album and 3 EPs.

Busty sent me at that band, said it was guilty pleasure crack girl pop. He was right, 3 or 4 of the songs are catchy and enjoyable. I am really surprised to see that it was ever heralded as anything else. Were they supposed to be 'legit" or something?

As for original question, it sounds about the same on Spotify as everything else, but there's undoubtedly compression and leveling through them so who knows. Can't tell via Spotify.

If I don't like the first 30 seconds of "Forever" do I need to keep listening?

I like that song "The Wire" but nothing else had really caught on with me.

Damn. I love the album. I think "If I Could Change Your Mind" might be the song of the year.

The other singles are great plus Don't Save Me and Days are Gone.

Also, i haven't noticed a problem with the loudness on my version.

I really like the album on the few spins I've made. I also didn't notice any mastering problems, but I may have gotten numb due to UK X-Factor and such... or maybe the Kylesa album...

it just sounds like a slick pop record to me...its fitting

I love this album.

Yeah. No issues here at all. Some catchy chickpop songs. Love it.

I guess this qualifies as music discussion.

I guess it does.

It's like we've forgotten how.

Haim's a horrible band name.

Yeah, Feldman is much better,

Anyone catch them on snl last night? Not horrible, but the mix was really weird. The guitars and bass were very quiet which looked weird with the big ampeg bass stack and rock n roll moves. They're cute and harmless, I think. Not gonna go out of my way to listen them again though, I think I got the gist of it.

I wanna make love to that bassface...

I don't know who or what that Nardwuar thing is, but it is terrible and should stop speaking into microphones.

cap'n,

damn cap'n

They seem pretty cool. I wish I liked their music.