The death of Beach Boys’ tortured genius Brian Wilson has brought down the curtains on a particular mode of Southern California pop: sun-kissed, melancholic and surf-obsessed. But another popular genre of LA music lives on in the irresistible new album from San Fernando Valley all-sister trio Haim: the Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac vision of a break-up as a gateway to 1970s-style, scented-candles-adjacent soft-rock nirvana. And make no mistake, I Quit is every bit as much an epic chronicling of heartbreak as Rumours. In fact, this bittersweet epic might be the most “break-uppy” break-up LP in recent music history.
Nobody could accuse lead singer and co-producer Danielle Haim of muddling her message across 13 tracks. That message being that relationships are the worst. Especially when they end badly. “You can fool some of the people some of the time – I was one of those fools,” she purrs menacingly on opener “Gone”. This hazy indie chugger proceeds to double down on the moral that it’s great to be single again by pinching the chorus from George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90”.
Heartache and its emotionally gory aftermath are universal experiences. But can they sustain a chunky 52-minute run-time? Haim’s solution to that knotty puzzle is to stay in the same groove lyrically while mixing things up in a musical sense, with the assistance of co-producer Rostam Batmanglij.
Danielle – who split from her long-term boyfriend and the group’s former producer Ariel Rechtshaid in 2022 – goes full Taylor Swift on “Down to be Wrong”, a wide-screen rumination on the end of a love affair that has the same rom-com-gone-bad energy as Swift’s “All Too Well”. In classic Swiftian style, the song begins quietly. It then builds and builds into a typhoon of country-rock angst. In so doing, it captures the contradictory nature of a particular sort of romantic rupturing, whereby you know you’re better off but are nonetheless profoundly down in the dumps.
Haim have a unique talent for switching things up influence-wise without making it feel as if they are trying someone else’s costumes on for size. They veer into streamlined R’n’B on “Relationships” (“I think I’m in love, but I can’t stand f***in’ relationships”) and then make a sideways leap into fragile folk-rock with the Boygenius-esque “Love You Right”. One of the biggest curveballs is groove-fuelled “Spinning”. Here, they get stuck into a pop onslaught that – and maybe this isn’t a coincidence given the title – suggests a cousin thrice-removed to glitterball Kylie classic “Spinning Around”.
There is wit to go with the pain. Having started with a hat-tip to George Michael, the record concludes a cheeky sample of U2’s early 1990s minimalist classic “Numb” on “Now It’s Time” – a sort of musical wink across the time zones, given that U2 sampled Haim with their 2017 rocker “Lights of Home”.
Never a band to do things by halves, they close out the tune with a seismic solo from guitarist Alana Haim that suggests The Edge in his prime – one final, thrilling reminder that these sisters can borrow from all over yet always sound brilliantly themselves.
Stream: “Gone”, “Down to be Wrong”
