Haim | I quit
HAIM’s I Quit announces itself with a shrug and a grin — a record that wears its title like a loose jacket, half-off, ready to be dropped at the door on the way out. “Every single song has a theme of quitting something that isn’t working for us anymore,” Alana Haim said when they unveiled it, and the result is a California scrapbook of old mantras dusted off for new wounds: seek and you shall find, don’t look back, let it all go.
Opener Gone sets the tone with a brazen nod to American mythmaking, quoting Lincoln and Springsteen in the same breath before drifting into warm folk reveries on tracks like Love You Right and Blood on the Street. There’s plenty of vintage shimmer here too — co-producer Rostam Batmanglij leaves fingerprints all over the acoustic textures, breakbeats and unexpected left turns that keep the record from feeling too much like just another West Coast sunset.
But if I Quit has an ethos, it’s not just about cutting ties — it’s about refusing to care who notices. HAIM are well aware they’ll never quite be treated like the boys with guitars. They lean in, anyway: grungy, glassy-eyed, and happy to soundtrack your slow-motion exit from whatever isn’t serving you anymore.
For all its big talk, I Quit is, fittingly, a bit inconsistent. It kicks off with conviction: Can I have your attention please/For the last time before I leave? sings Danielle on Gone — then immediately backtracks, On second thought I changed my mind. If the album has a defining tension, it’s exactly that: the push-pull of wanting out but never quite closing the door.
Lead single Relationships is the record’s best snapshot of this indecision — a poolside breakup anthem built on a shuffling beat and the behind-the-scenes drama of Danielle and Ariel Rechtshaid’s real-life split. It’s messy, defiant, and oddly sweet: the musical equivalent of the much-memed Nicole Kidman post-divorce paparazzi shot.
At its best, I Quit finds liberation in cutting loose. Down to Be Wrong beams with relief: I didn’t think it could be so easy till I left it behind. By contrast, Blood on the Street lands a darker blow: I swear you wouldn’t care if I was covered in blood lying dead on the street. It’s pure, biting farewell — but also, it insists, not a grudge. That would imply giving a toss.
There are moments when the album clings to nostalgia a touch too tightly. Take Me Back rattles through sun-bleached memories over Rostam’s glockenspiel like it’s 2008 all over again, while Lucky Stars wanders off into shoegaze territory with all the swirling fuzz and none of the weight. Songs like Million Years and Cry drift by with nice hooks but feel oddly anonymous next to more finely drawn moments like The Farm — a sleepy, honest acoustic ballad that admits just how brutal it can be to walk away: The distance keeps widening/Between what I let myself say/And what I feel.
When I Quit pulls together its drifting parts, it’s genuinely affecting. The brass flourish that closes Try to Feel My Pain feels earned. The hushed trio harmonies on Love You Right do too. But the album’s final note, Now It’s Time, feels like HAIM pressing every button at once: an awkward brew of boom-bap beats, a Rostam piano flourish, an over-eager empowerment hook and — just for good measure — a drum fill you half expect to hear on In the Air Tonight. By the time a buried voice sighs, Am I reaching out to say I never gave two fucks anyway?, you’re ready to believe them.
For all its misfires, I Quit does land its central point: freedom is messy, break-ups don’t tie themselves up in neat bowstrings, and sometimes the bravest thing is to stop caring altogether. Or to pretend you do. Or to change your mind halfway through. HAIM are still becoming the band they want to be — and this imperfect, searching album might be their clearest declaration yet.
