Music’s Greatest Sister Act Is Finally Back. On Their New Album, They Break Up With a Key Collaborator.
Everyone knows that breakups can be painful not only for the couple involved, but for everyone in their orbit—family, friends, pets, whomever. In one verse of the country-folk ballad “The Farm,” among the better of the many breakup songs on Haim’s cheekily titled new album, I Quit, the singer’s mother tells her the family just wants to see her smile again. In the next, her sister offers to let her move in, “if you need a place to calm down.” That’s especially touching if you’re aware that the singer’s sisters are also the other members of the band; recent interviews tell us they did move in together in a rough patch not long ago.
This album returns again and again to lingering issues and doubts about the romantic split the band’s lead singer and songwriter Danielle Haim has gone through since the Los Angeles trio’s last album, 2020’s Women in Music Pt. III, which was nominated for the Grammy for Album of the Year. But for listeners, a further unspoken question remains, because that ex-partner happened to be Ariel Rechtshaid, who also produced all three of Haim’s previous albums. In the aftermath, it’s been difficult not to wonder who would end up with custody of their distinctive sound.
The immediate answer has to be the Haim sisters, of course: Their style is first of all a product of Danielle, Este, and Alana’s unique chemistry, shared humor, and work ethic; of their sibling harmonies; of their childhood in the family hobby band Rockinhaim, learning their instruments and their classic-rock tunes at parents Mordechai and Donna’s knees; and of the place they’ve taken as a trio of wild-child guardians of the spirit of the San Fernando Valley, in a City of Angels that’s had more than its share of hardships in 2025. This album comes partly out of a period where they all found themselves single simultaneously for the first time in many years, which led to a little acting out and a lot of reaffirming of bonds.
On I Quit, then, they still have that otherworldly vocal blend. They still marry 1970s album rock with 1980s pop, 1990s girl-group R&B, and countless other knowing references. And they still have those moments that feel like spontaneous group levitation. But they do seem to come less often. There are some songs that don’t seem like they would have passed muster on earlier Haim albums like WiMP3 (as fans style it) or on their 2013 debut Days Are Gone, one of the great pop albums of the 2010s. And even the stronger songs don’t always achieve escape velocity. Whether that’s due to Rechtshaid’s absence or because of a mood Haim is aiming for this time, maybe more grit and less dazzle, I can’t say for sure. Production was handled by Danielle along with Rostam (aka Rostam Batmanglij), the former Vampire Weekend member who’s also been part of their circle for years and played a key role on WiMP3.
Part of the problem is that when some of us think of Haim, we think immediately of “The Wire,” “Want You Back,” and “The Steps”—songs that leap up, grab you by the shoulders, and spin you deliriously ’round your kitchen, the block, your town, the world. Not all Haim songs are like that, and never were. But it’s a craving not quite satisfied on I Quit. (Surely the title doesn’t mean we quit making bangers, does it?)
I’ve never been fully won over by the lead single “Relationships,” for instance, which first appeared in March. It’s a fine idea, a song that believes in love but thumbs its nose at the psychological rigmarole of coupledom. Better yet, it manages to find half a dozen funny slant rhymes for the word “relationship”—“escape from it,” “communicatin’ it,” “the way it is,” “the shit our parents did” … but like several other songs here, it feels kind of static structurally. Elements seem to circle back on themselves rather than build—fittingly for the theme, in fact, but not the makings of a transcend anthem. Not for the last time here, it’s as if the song’s preoccupation with its governing idea tends to weigh it down.
Still, if “Relationships” were the weakest it got, I Quit would be an overall triumph. And for most of its first half, that’s what the record pretty much is. It has a great album-opening line on “Gone,” where Danielle sings, “Can I have your attention please/ For the last time before I leave.” I kept wondering what it reminded me of, until I realized it was “Please allow me to introduce myself …” in “Sympathy for the Devil.” I don’t think that’s altogether an accident, given a guitar solo that feels like a kissing cousin to Keith Richards’ famous solo there, and a similar kind of drum-circle call-and-response climax near the end. It’s a fine way to set oneself up as an unreliable narrator.
The unfortunate distraction there is the use of a sample from George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90” in the chorus. The problem isn’t the potential cheese factor; pulling that kind of move off is a Haim specialty. But it comes too early in the song, like a punchline that interrupts its own setup. By that point we haven’t even heard the other two sisters’ voices yet. But “Gone” is still an effective start, introducing the record’s themes of heartbreak and independence, while reassuring that it won’t take itself too seriously (a promise made to be broken).
In “All Over Me,” a smart, lusty celebration of nonmonogamy, as in all of the best Haim songs, there are multiple sounds to listen to at any given moment, and they’re not usually the same sounds as 30 seconds ago—from the background twang of a sitar to heavy cascades of electric guitar while Danielle specifies what positions, both sexual and social, she’d prefer her paramour to assume next.
In the best of all the breakup songs here, “Down to Be Wrong,” downbeat, smoky verses detail the process of walking away, but then the choruses leap up an octave with a bright California-rock “oooh!” as Danielle declares that “this time” she’s not going to change her mind. Haim is known for striding purposefully through L.A. streets in their videos, and this song ends with Danielle asserting that “my feet are on the ground and I keep walking,” even as the swelling and ebbing background vocals make it feel as if she’s traversing a swaying rope bridge.
Whatever she claims, though, she’s going to revisit this thought process over and over in the later phases of the album. And more than any production or arrangement choices, that’s its real flaw. Breakup albums make up a grand tradition, but they need to approach their subject from varied and unpredictable angles. On I Quit, too often instead we get therapy-speak tones that summon the worst L.A. wheatgrass-smoothie clichés. Although they range across musical styles, songs like “Love You Right,” “Million Years,” “Try to Feel My Pain,” “Cry,” “Blood on the Street,” and closer “Now It’s Time” all have sections where it feels like the listener is caught in the middle of someone else’s endless post-breakup argument. We’ve all had those kinds of obsessive bargaining sessions in real life and in our own heads, and they’re tedious even when they’re happening to you, let alone when someone else reproduces them to a beat. Some line edits would have helped, but they also should have dropped a few of these 15 songs altogether, to give the rest a fighting chance.
Thankfully some songs avoid this trap. The title of “Take Me Back” might sound like more relationship drama, but it’s actually about wanting to revisit times gone by—though, given some of the goings-on in the backs of trucks and the front seats of cars in the antics recounted here, not necessarily more innocent times. These ribaldries roll out over strummed acoustic guitar in a rapid recitation that seems to remind every listener of a different touchstone—I’ve heard a few people refer to Jim Carroll’s strung-out classic “People Who Died,” as both fire off a series of given names (Carroll had a Bobby while Haim has a Billy, though the latter presumably survived his “bad GPA” and being unable to “get it up”). It really has more in common with strummy speak-singing slacker numbers from 1990s alt-rock, a subgenre including Beck, Primitive Radio Gods, Shawn Mullins, Soul Coughing, early Modest Mouse, and OMC’s “How Bizarre.” Given that it’s Haim, you definitely also have to square that with Sheryl Crow’s “All I Wanna Do.” Whatever the case, this self-aware indulgence in millennial nostalgia yields real pleasure.
The sweet love tune “Lucky Stars,” meanwhile, brings a surprising swerve into a neo-shoegaze wall of hazy guitar feedback. And “Spinning” offers a nu-disco workout à la Robyn or Dua Lipa, with lead vocals taken over by Alana Haim (who since the previous album has branched out into acting, with a starring role in band BFF Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza). It took a few listens to adapt to her breathier tone—and maybe more could have been done sooner with the other sisters’ supporting lines, to weave that old Haim magic—but ultimately it’s a refreshing change.
There are several more highlights even among the tracks that are still stuck in Splitsville. I’ve come around strongly to “Everybody’s Trying to Figure Me Out,” a kind of centerpiece to the album that goes deeper into the introspective mood and breaks on through to the other side. It mixes classic sparse, shouty Haim stylings with passages of staccato electronic rhythms, as Danielle works through “things I’ve done I can’t deny,” buys a fresh pack of smokes, and dreams herself up a time machine. Perhaps that device is what makes the whole band slow its tempo woozily at the 2-minute-and-50-second mark, as the song transitions into this useful, repeated message to the brokenhearted: “You think you’re gonna die, but you’re not gonna die,” over martial drum fills. I’m reminded of recent L.A. transplant Lucy Dacus’ lines on her song “Best Guess” this year: “If this doesn’t work out, I’ll lose my mind/ And after a while, I’ll be fine.” It’s at once the most comforting and saddest truth of a failed romance. On the other hand, I have no idea what Danielle means when she sings here, “Renters’ rights, squatters’ rights/ I’ll be the gatekeeper for the rest of my life”—but I still want to yell along with it.
And no matter what else is going on, most of the songs can boast what I think of as “Haim moments.” Like the clatter of asymmetrical breakbeat drums that come in on “Million Years” to unsettle the atmosphere just as Danielle sings, “And I know love finds a way to take a toll on you,” or the three-way counterpoint vocals that bubble up at the end of that song. In “Try to Feel My Pain,” it’s the moment after Danielle sings the subliminally Bob Dylan–quoting line, “How does it feel to be on your own, and be anyone you want?” when she takes in an audible sharp breath as if to steel herself to leap into that complete unknown. And back on “The Farm,” there’s the point at 2:40 when the song’s internal debate has been settled (“So we can give up trying/ And you can keep the farm/ Just buy me out”), and an unexpected, Neil Young–style harmonica line comes wheezing in to underline the resolution.
Some fans, of course, will be ready to roll with each self-care-centric syllable here, and feel that every song takes them airborne. For others, I Quit may need to grow on them. Either way, I don’t think there’s cause to fret that Rechtshaid took Haim’s mojo away with him. More likely, this album will come to seem like a transitional step in the assuredly long musical life of Haim. If they go right and you go left, you know you’ll meet back up again, because they’ve been taking the steps.
Slate
