In the film, dismayed at being encouraged to write a “snappy song” in the studio by their manager, the band’s singer Jimmy pauses before singing “I quit” into the mic, snapping his fingers.
“We’ve always sung that, since we were kids,” says Alana. “Whenever we would check the mic in the studio or at soundcheck we would sing ‘I quit’ and we were doing it throughout recording the album. We joked about naming the record I Quit and then [we realised] that we were singing about quitting things that don’t serve us any more.”
Haim note that, for them, quit is not a negative word. “Quitting is a new beginning and quitting things that
don’t serve you any more is a good thing,” says Alana. “It’s funny, the other day someone gave me a copy of our last album, and I love it so much, but I just felt like that chapter of my life was done. Then, we got the first pressing of I Quit and it felt so extremely exciting. It really does feel like a new chapter has begun.”
W
hen Danielle Haim moved her belongings into her sister Alana’s apartment some time after the end of a long tour in 2022, it marked a historic moment. For the first time since Haim had formed (in the wake of performing with their parents Moti and Donna in family band Rockinhaim, and Este and Danielle’s brief stint in pop group Valli Girls) all three sisters were single. “The last time we were all single was when I was in high school,” says Danielle. “So there is a huge nostalgic feeling with this album, but it’s about dating stories throughout our adult lives, actually.” With a home studio set-up and Danielle “hunkering down, making little ideas up on GarageBand like always,” I Quit began to take shape. Heavy on guitars and rich in texture and quality, it draws from all over Haim’s pot of influences, from the 1960s to the present day. “We’ve learned so much about being in the studio,” says Alana. “Seeing Danielle was like watching a ballet.” Also, Alana says, thanks to Danielle’s culinary
skills, they were well fed (“She was cookin’ in the studio, in the kitchen, cookin’ everywhere!”). “It was a real push and pull of being loose, but also serious,” says Danielle, noting that Haim stopped focusing too much on small details in favour of paying attention to the overall impact of the songs, which include a track on which Alana and Este each assume lead vocal responsibilities. “It’s good to stay loose, you know?” she points out.
“I really feel we accomplished that with this album; we really did try to feel loose and let our emotions take the forefront. It was just such a fun time in all of our lives, especially for me. I was dating and having this amazing [period of] self-exploration about what I want and what I need as a woman and in relationships. You can feel that on the record, and I’m really proud of that.” That feeling is most emphatic on lead single Relationships, which pulls off the classic Haim trick of evoking multiple genres while sounding completely new. ‘I think I’m in love, but I can’t stand fuckin’ relationships,’ deadpans Danielle, while the sleeve is Haim’s tribute to the Nicole Kidman ‘divorce’ meme, based on a photo of the actor, arms aloft, allegedly celebrating her split from Tom Cruise (she has since debunked it as an internet myth).
32 | Music Week
“Stadiums and festival headline slots for Haim are very much part of
the plan” MIKE GREEK, CAA
I Quit is stuffed with one-liners, nowhere more so than the acoustic-driven pop-rock of Take Me Back, which evokes Fleetwood Mac and was co-written with Tobias Jesso Jr (Justin Vernon also contributed to Everybody’s Trying To Figure Me Out). ‘Billy St. Reams didn’t wanna fuck/Bad GPA couldn’t get it up’, goes the second verse, referencing a character who struggled both sexually and academically (GPA stands for ‘grade point average’ and is used to measure academic achievement in American schools). “I changed his name!” Alana says, to uproarious laughter. “But yeah, Billy St. Reams didn’t want to fuck, unfortunately, which is what I ran into a lot in my high-school years… and my 20s and 30s… and today!” Danielle regains composure first. “Looking back was so fun,” she says. “We were
Clean living: Haim (right) in Steamer Cleaners in LA and (below) the I Quit album art
a bunch of art school kids and there were no rules, which was amazing, but craziness ensued.” “That day in the studio, we were pissing ourselves,” says Alana. “You can’t write a song like that and not be crying with laughter. It actually came out of a day where we were refusing to finish songs and Rostam was like, ‘We cannot start a new song,’ then we did it anyway. It’s one of my favourites on the album.” Haim say that their bond with Batmanglij is boosted by his background as a member of Vampire Weekend. “It’s really hard to find someone who can record a live band nowadays, and we’re an organic band when it comes down to it,” says Danielle. Batmanglij believes the key to I Quit is that they focused on songwriting in a very specific way. “We spent a long time making sure we had fully finished songs that anyone could sit with an acoustic guitar and record a cover of,” he says. “I’m proud that every song feels like a complete thought.” At Batmanglij’s base on the East side of LA, they recorded some songs live all together in the room, and he says I Quit is “more about playing live than the modern pop process”.
“In this era, where so much music is constructed from copying and pasting, there’s something about capturing the living performance that I think separates Haim,” he says. “The fact that it’s them performing, and the way they play, it has a distinct sound to it.”
MEET TEAM HAIM
Management: Volara Management Label: Polydor UK President: Ben Mortimer MD: Jodie Cammidge Marketing: Jamie Ahye Digital Marketing: Andrew Bunton Agent: Mike Greek & Lola Castillo Murphy (CAA) Publicity: Susie Ember (Kings & Queens PR) National Radio: James Passmore (Plugged In PR) Commercial & Regional Radio: Gavin Hughes (Fanatic PR) TV: Flossie Easthope
Mike Greek, the band’s agent at CAA, also sees the magic in Haim’s performance.
“Haim are a fantastic rock’n’roll band who carve their own path, creating music that is both personal and aspirational,” he says. “As they continue to evolve, stadiums and festival headline slots are very much part of the plan for the future.”
Batmanglij says, on stage, the band “strike a chord on an almost primal level”, that seeing them play is an “emotional, visceral experience”. He believes the songs on I Quit “will live long lives”
and has a hunch that “when people see them play these songs and experience the thrill of seeing them nail the acrobatics that are happening musically, more and more people will understand Haim”. Don’t believe him? Batmanglij has back up. “I remember having dinner with Bono back in 2015 or 2016…” he says, allowing the clang of the namedrop to reverberate.
“I went to hang out with Ryan Tedder, and he didn’t tell me who’d be there, but it was Bono and the three
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