Haim’s 2013 breakthrough single The Wire was a swaggering, high-spirited breakup anthem. The slick, twanging pop-rock was correctly identified at the time by Portishead’s Geoff Barrow as echoing the oeuvre of Shania Twain (though this wasn’t the sick burn he thought it was), over which the LA trio copped to commitment phobia, communication issues and having their heads turned, before skipping into the California sunset with their hearts intact. Well, to commandeer the title of Haim’s debut album: those days are very much gone.
I Quit, the sisters’ fourth album, still has plenty of breakup songs, but these are no cheerful odes to dumping dudes in your 20s. Instead, the record fixates on the bitter end of a deeply flawed long-term relationship; at least some of these songs are informed by the love lost between lead vocalist Danielle Haim and Ariel Rechtshaid, the garlanded producer who worked on all three of the band’s previous albums (I Quit is instead helmed by Danielle, Rostam Batmanglij and Buddy Ross). The mood is not desolate – the narrator instigated the split – but it is searching and pained. The ex is portrayed as careless and manipulative, and punches are not pulled (“I swear you wouldn’t care if I was covered in blood lying dead on the street”). There are many references to setting oneself free, reflected in the – perhaps too on-the-nose – sample of George Michael’s Freedom! ‘90, which is woven through the opening track, Gone.
