Haim has returned with its fourth album, I Quit. The trio, made up of sisters Danielle, Alana, and Este Haim, formed in Los Angeles and debuted in 2013 with Days Are Gone. Before the band signed with Polydor Records, Danielle had worked as a touring guitarist for Jenny Lewis and Julian Casablancas. But the sisters, who grew up in a musical family, reunited once Danielle came off the road and have since earned four GRAMMY nominations.
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A recurring theme in Haim’s music is navigating romantic life, and the excitement, awkwardness, and confusion it entails. With a brand new album to take in, and its lead single “Relationships”, here’s a soft rock relationship manual from Haim in three songs.
“Relationships”
The first single from I Quit finds Danielle liberated from the quagmire of a relationship. Rather than a situation that feels secure or comfortable, she sings about the burden of being in a relationship and wonders if this is “just the sh*t our parents did.” Parts of her vocal delivery arrive in a whisper, not quite Mariah Carey, but kind of. It replaces the contempt for romantic knots with the light and airy feeling of freedom.
Wasting time, driving through the Eastside
Doing my thing ’cause I can’t decide if we’re through
Well, are we?
And if we are, what we gonna do?
“The Wire”
“The Wire” was constructed with a Gary Glitter groove and appeared on Haim’s debut, Days Are Gone. It’s interesting to jump from the band’s most recent single to one of its earliest. Here, Danielle describes a casual breakup. The song doesn’t detail exactly what went wrong, which is the point. Nothing terrible happened, but when one partner changes their mind, it’s over. Though “The Wire” describes a failing relationship, the track feels optimistic amid the breakup. Another lesson from Haim’s manual: Sometimes you just gotta move on.
You know there’s no rhyme or reason
For the way it turned out to be
I didn’t go and try to change my mind
Not intentionally.
“Want You Back”
Danielle finds herself on the other side of a busted romance. One that she blew up and now regrets. And it was a struggle to complete the song. “Want You Back” began nearly 30 bpm slower than the current track. “We worked on it for a couple of weeks [initially] and were just like, this is not working,” Danielle said. But Alana wouldn’t give up on the song, and they eventually sped it up. It recalls 1970s soft rock, with a Fleetwood Mac vibe and the kind of turmoil Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham might have worked out publicly in their biggest hits. Final lesson: Be honest.
I said we were opposite lovers
(Said it from the beginning)
You kept trying to prove me wrong
(Said you’d always see it through)
And I know that I ran you down
So you ran away with your heart.
Photo by Nancy Kaszerman/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
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