Listening to Haim’s mild-mannered, pastel-shaded albums does not prepare you for quite how rude, noisy and hilarious this Los Angeles trio are live. Playing their biggest ever indoor show at the O2, the three Haim sisters were on boisterous form, all dressed in matching leather trousers and throwing semi-ironic bad-ass rock-star poses.
Balancing high-decibel showmanship with agreeably nerdy charm, the siblings claimed selling out this iconic London venue was a dream come true. Their parents had even flown in to witness it. “This is literally sacred ground for us,” declared guitarist, drummer and singer Danielle Haim. “This is by far the best night of my life.” A show-stopping guest appearance by their friend and sometime collaborator Taylor Swift elevated an already excellent concert into a major pop-diva event.
This was a booming, boisterous, big-hearted show from the start. Up From a Dream roared along on a thunderous glam-rock backbeat, and My Song 5 was the first of many heavy-metal headbanger numbers. The trio also peppered the set with deadpan humour, most notably bass guitarist Este, who introduced the saucy booty-call funk-pop confessional 3AM with an extended comic monologue about taking drugs at Glastonbury and a surreal, salacious sexual encounter in Cardiff. “Mom and dad are here!” her sisters reminded her with theatrical caution.
But all this levity was tempered by some darker emotional shades too. On the mournful acoustic ballad Hallelujah, Alana paid tribute to her childhood friend Sammi Kane Kraft, who died at 20 in a tragic car accident. Adding exra poignancy, Kraft’s family were in the audience. Then Danielle laid out Haim’s long #MeToo history of encounters with leering, condescending, sexist men in the music business in Man From the Magazine. Punctuated with one-fingered salutes and four-letter insults, this deliciously sarcastic diatribe sounded much more muscular live than on its Joni Mitchell-tinged studio version.
Swift’s surprise cameo fell midway through the evening, triggering an explosion of incredulous screams. “I haven’t been on stage for a very long time,” the country-pop superstar beamed, praising the audience for their “extraordinary work” in singing along to the set so far. She then added vocals to Gasoline, a Haim song she reworked last year, blending them with lyrics from her own composition Love Story. In a sweetly egalitarian touch, Swift wore a variation on the same band uniform as the sisters, and made sure not to upstage them, despite her stronger voice and planet-sized celebrity status. She performed for just a few minutes, then gracefully left the stage.
Building to a mighty climax with a final run of back-to-back anthems, including a rousing Forever and a majestic version of The Wire, Haim proved they did not need any help from famous friends to blow the roof off the O2.
