By Barry Divola
Haim’s I Quit: the sister-trio embrace single life and sound positively dizzy about it.
Haim, I Quit
There’s no doubt that pop music is a woman’s world right now, and more specifically a solo woman’s world, belonging to the likes of Taylor, Olivia, Charli, Chappell, Billie and many more. But the three sisters of Haim are proving to be a unique threat.
“They could all certainly have been in Fleetwood Mac,” Stevie Nicks recently said about the band. It was no idle claim. Over the space of three previous albums, the LA trio – Danielle, Este and Alana Haim – have become a force to be reckoned with, crafting soaring, radio-friendly pop with close harmonies honed from years of sibling revelry.
And much like the Mac, they’re not afraid of airing dirty laundry and working out personal dramas in their songs. The band’s last album, 2020’s Women In Music, Pt III, was particularly close to the bone, delving into grief, sadness and depression, reportedly after they were working out a lot of issues via therapy.
Throughout it all they’ve presented a united front, a gang of three precociously talented musicians who are undoubtedly cool, but also relatable and a little goofy. It’s no coincidence that they come from the San Fernando Valley, like their frequent artwork and music video collaborator, film director Paul Thomas Anderson. Like him, they grew up in “the Valley”, where Hollywood studios meet the ’burbs, and they mine regular human hopes, dreams, foibles and failures to do their thing.
The title of their fourth album, I Quit, might at first sound like a shoulder-shrugging statement of resignation. But, in fact, it’s the opposite. They’ve quit giving a shit, they’re embracing life and they sound positively dizzy about it. It’s telling that this is the first album they wrote and recorded while all three sisters, who are all in their thirties, were single. And for Danielle, who ended a long-term relationship with their regular producer Ariel Rechtshaid, it sounds like a new beginning of sorts.
Haim’s fourth album was made following lead singer/songwriter Danielle’s breakup from the band’s longtime producer Ariel Rechtstaid.Credit: Terrence O’Connor
“Now I own the mud that I’m standing in,” she declares in the closing track, Now It’s Time. Over the previous 14 songs there is plenty of mud, but Haim aren’t wallowing in it. Instead, they’re acknowledging it and then shaking it off. As Stevie once sang, “When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know.”
Listen to the opening track, Gone. Over a stripped-back shuffle, Danielle lays down the law: “I’ll do whatever I want, I’ll see who I want to see, I’ll f--- off whenever I want, I’ll be whatever I need.” Oh, did I mention that the song features a joyous sample of George Michael’s Freedom! ’90 and that Danielle rips out a guitar solo that cosies up to Keith Richard’s famous stinging riffs from Sympathy for the Devil?
Yeah, sounds like they’ve quit putting any boundaries around their sound, too. They’re traditionalists in that they know how to play in any number of genres; they’re rebels in that they refuse to stay in one lane, weaving all over the record shop. Love You Right is country-pop; Try To Feel My Pain has funky clavinet and jazzy horns; Spinning suggests they’ve been on a Prince listening jag.
Perhaps no song represents the new attitude better than Relationships. Over a head-bobbing hip-hop beat, Este lays down a dance floor-beckoning bass line, the three of them chant like an empowered cheer squad, and Danielle sings, “I think I’m in love”. Sounds sweet, until she adds the kicker: “But I can’t stand f---ing relationships.”
I Quit is the sound of three women expressing their fears and triumphs, their losses and gains, and doing it within a pop framework; Valley girls who are by turns pristine, partying and pissed-off. “Everybody’s trying to figure me out,” Danielle sings at one point, before adding, “oh, and that’s alright.”
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