HAIM crash out of love on I quit

It’s been twelve years since the smash debut of Days Are Gone, but Alana, Daneille and Este Haim are still going strong. Over the years their music has been refined and tweaked, but what remains across their debut, Something To Tell You, and Women In Music Pt. III is their purposeful and considered instrumentation, a sound that draws on classic influences while looking ahead, and above all else, playfulness. I quit is no different, and while it’s definitely a continuation of their output to date, it still stands on its own.

So much of the record has a sense of nostalgia – not anything new for HAIM – but this record reaches across multiple decades. The spoken word on “Million years,” “Take me back” and “Relationships” add to the 90s feel (think “Never Ever” by All Saints), the career-long inspiration from Fleetwood Mac brings in the 80s on tracks like “Try to feel my pain,” and we go even further to hear what sounds like Billy Joel’s harmonica on “The farm,” a soft 70s ballad that laments the aftermath of a breakup. You can say a lot about HAIM, but you certainly can’t say they don’t honour their influences.

Album standouts, frustratingly, are the released singles – “Relationships” being at the forefront – but there are two surprises in the unreleased tracks. Namely “Gone” where they infuse George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90” into the elation of letting go, and the disco dancing “Spinning” that feels out of place in the album’s pop rock at first, but will get you onto the roller rink nonetheless. “Spinning” also sees Danielle take a step back from lead vocal, and for “Cry” and “Blood on the street” after it too, where Este and Alana take centre stage and offer their own tones to the mix – familiar, as they’re sisters after all, but different enough to add great flavour.

While the record is a good listen, and well worth a listen at that, there are parts that make you wish they’d gone the extra mile. “Lucky stars” lacks the oomph that their first album packed in its punch, its vocal requiring a little more force, and similarly on “Try to feel my pain”, where the trio call back to the sonics of Women In Music Pt. III but pare back the delivery. Even the single “Everybody’s trying to figure me out” calls for an extra layer as it comes to a head, just something grander to drive home the multiple motifs that swirl around in its finale.

I quit shows that HAIM will always make good music, and while this record doesn’t radically shift the formula, it reinforces their strengths: thoughtful songwriting, tight production, and seamless cohesion as a trio. After so long in the game, HAIM have reached the catch-22 of the music industry; stick to the sound that made you, and risk listeners calling it stale; change it up, and face complaints that you’ve lost what made you special in the first place. It may not hit the highs of their earlier work with quite the same force, but it doesn’t need to – if it ain’t broke, HAIM aren’t trying to fix it.