Feeling your feelings is hard, isn’t it? HAIM want you to know that they’re right there with you in the throes of Big Emotions™, trying to feel unburdened. I quit is the title of their new album, and throughout its 53 minutes, Danielle, Este, and Alana lock arms and find various ways to break out of their slumps, regardless of how bad they want to throw in the towel.
I quit is the first album from the Haim sisters since their phenomenal third record Women in Music Pt. III, which functioned almost like a factory reset. The percussive edges and syncopated rhythms mined on their debut and follow-up Something to Tell You were somewhat present, but this was a HAIM that felt much looser and messier; they leaned into grey areas sonically and lyrically, pushed their sound away from the 2010s alt-pop they helped define, and ushered in a more organic, naked style. It was HAIM reborn, with a newfound spirit and vocabulary propelling the sisters as they tackled depression, grief, and quarter life crises.
Get HAIM Tickets Here
They approach I quit with a lot of the same energy, albeit with a slightly less unified sonic palette and a much larger emphasis on the aftermath of a breakup. It’s messy, but not exactly in the ‘throw everything against the wall, anything goes’ way that an album called I quit would suggest. Instead, the album is a memorable fusion of HAIM’s past and present, a varied-but-very-enjoyable return that boasts some of the trio’s best songs to date.
As with every HAIM album, Danielle takes center stage, but her sisters’ unwavering presence functions as a kind of armor; on I quit, much of the lyrics can be traced back to Danielle’s breakup with longtime producer Ariel Rechtshaid, whom she dated for nine years.
Afterwards she moved in with Alana and enjoyed the comfort and freedom of family; the trio took trips down memory lane and revisited the music of their adolescence, looking at 2000s indie, the ’90s pop from early childhood, and songs that captured being young and “having no inhibitions,” as Alana told Consequence this month. In some of these sonic references, you get a little bit of the “fuck it” vibe they’re attempting on I quit. They bust out a sample of George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90” for a particularly on-the-nose entrance to the album on “Gone,” they go for a fuzzed-out ’90s slacker rock sound a la The Breeders on “Lucky stars,” and borrow a page from The Postal Service on the skitteringly-anxious “Million Years.”
HAIM treading back to the sounds and aesthetics of their childhood is nothing new; they’ve always shared a penchant for mall pop hooks and ’90s R&B, which has helped pushed the group away from a more anonymous indie sound even as they’ve embraced a scrappier, folk-esque palette. Lead single “Relationships” lives in that nostalgic sweet spot, but boasts more contemporary ideas about partnership and intimacy: “Is it just the shit our parents did/ And had to live with it/ In their relationship?” Danielle asks as the chords turn from sweet to sour.
