Lots of genre names get thrown around to describe the Pine Hill Haints: rockabilly, punk, Celtic, blues. It helps, because regular rock'n'roll adjectives-- gritty, spirited, haunted-- describe their presence but fail to provide a sense of their unique throwback hop. So let's be clear: Normally when a reviewer says a band "does not let any genre define them," they mean simply that no single genre properly describes the band. When I say it with regard to the Pine Hill Haints, and their new record To Win or to Lose, it means that the Haints have managed to weld a recognizable style from these genres with the style and precision of a band with a much larger profile. To Win or to Lose, the band's second album on K Records, marks their boldest effort yet, mostly abandoning the playful, deflective subject matter of previous albums for bold, scattered character-making. The shift, however subtle, is successful because the Haints maintain not only their brittle, rock grooves but also their sense of humor, companionship, and identity, such that no one ever mulls whether the Alabama quintet has "matured" or some such other nonsense.
The beautifully recorded To Win or to Lose (engineered by Lynn Bridges) greets each of the Haints' many instruments-- accordions washboard, saw, bucket-- with ample space and warmth. On previous albums the band has relied on lead Haint Jamie Barrier's spindly electric riffing to carry their rhythms, but here Barrier limits himself mostly to small percussive slashes (an exception: listen to his guitar twirl gracefully in the fires of "Not So Lucky and the Invisible Kid"), freeing your attention for the mulling bass tones, painted drum work, and, most prominently, accordion.
Overselling the originality would be a mistake. At any given moment you will recognize the DNA of a Haints song, and, were you to have a broad definition of "folk" or even maybe "Appalachian" music, you could slap a word on it, but the arrangements are clever and eerie. My cat jumped at the hot-plate bass that carries the minimal, clacking "Revenge of the Spider-Web Boy". Note the trebly, tropical mandolin of "Bordello Blackwidow"; shiver and strut with the spectral guitars of "Screaming Jenny". To Win or to Lose brims with these ear-pricks, which spice the Haints' traditional minute-long spitfires and buy them time for their mostly new exploration of longer compositions like "Never Cry" and "Doublehead".
The songs are propped up by the scarred vocals of Barrier, but his voice isn't Waits-ian or "damaged"; he's merely adept at coughing out phrases in suggestive and unexpected ways. He seems increasingly interested in characters, and he can be blockily poetic. During "Never Cry", he speaks of a roving band of "fair-weather friends" who stick around only when it's warm out. On "My Bones Are Gonna Rise Again", another vocalist, Matt Bakula, notes, "Her lips were frosty as a root-beer mug." The bratty sing-song hooks of "My Bones" or "Never Cry" provide the type of in-your-ear footholds that the Haints albums have lacked in the past.
To callback the album title's sentiment: to win, mostly. The Haints have always nipped at their own sound. On To Win or to Lose they find it, each of their deftly carved instruments aimed like pistols at your heels. As a bonus, Barrier's ghoulish dark-world now offers more depth than 1950s love dramas and ghost tales. To Win or to Lose contains roaming gangs, thieves, and kids both invisible and spider-webbed. It's like Tim Burton: South. Shuffle in.
