HAIM ‘I Quit’ review: LA sisters make their case for a HAIM summer

It’s hard not to get hooked by an album that starts with a sample of ‘Freedom’ by George Michael. On I quit, the fourth offering from the LA-based trio of sisters, they have created their most self-assured and cohesive project yet. Across the 15-track LP, Danielle, Este and Alana Haim focus on hopeful and bravado-filled beginnings, murky middles and confident endings. In contrast to the melancholy of their third studio album, Women in Music Pt. III, I quit feels like it’s been created with the wisdom of hindsight, even when they delve into tough subject matters.

HAIM may have found their lo-fi sound on their third album, but they’ve perfected it on I quit. Perhaps a great example of the ‘mono-genre’ direction music is heading in, I quit blends soft rock, formulaic pop, country, UK garage (stick with us) and just a touch of disco on Alana Haim’s solo song ‘Spinning’. The record plays like a mixtape or Spotify playlist of all their musical heroes and reference points.

‘Down to be wrong’, track four on the album, is a career best and an instant HAIM classic, reminiscent of Women in Music Pt. III favourite ‘The Steps’. The brash ‘Take me back’ goes as far as to include what sounds like a harmonica and a xylophone – oddly, it works well. The track takes us on a trip down memory lane to the women’s late adolescence as they long for things to go back to how they used to be.

Moving forwards and backwards are the main themes of I quit, physically and metaphorically, whether it’s “driving through the Eastside” on ‘Relationships’, the train that won’t turn around on ‘Down to be wrong’, getting off said train on ‘The farm’, and then the “roaring trains of change and doubt that pulled in the station” on ‘Lucky stars’.

Este Haim has never sounded better than she does taking the lead on the emotional ‘Cry’. To be able to hear from each sister individually adds layers and allows us to appreciate each of them separately. They come together perfectly on penultimate track ‘Blood on the street’. This one sounds like they’ve all had similar experiences with different individuals in a way that recalls debut album track ‘The Wire’.

On the final track ‘Now it’s time’, Danielle Haim states that “it’s time to let go”, before what may be the band’s best instrumental to date delivers an almost-too-perfect crescendo. It’s the perfect bookend to the “now I’m gone, now I’m free, born to run, nothing I need” sentiments of the opening track. Roll the windows down, you’re in for a ride. As Charli XCX so eloquently put it during her Coachella set, it well and truly will be a “HAIM SUMMER”.