HAIM ‘I Quit’ Review: Treading an Uncharacteristically Rocky Road

“Can I have your attention, please?” goes the opening line of “Gone,” the first track on HAIM’s fourth studio album, I Quit. It feels like a statement of intent, as the album see Danielle, Alana, and Este Haim leaning into their pop tendencies on their most radio-friendly album to date.

Lead single “Relationships,” for one, comes armed with a breezy, instantly memorable pop hook and Instagram-ready refrain: “When an innocent mistake/Turns into 17 days/Fucking relationships.” Elsewhere, “All Over Me” alternately takes its cues from country-pop, which is currently seeing a resurgence, and Midnights-era Taylor Swift.

Across the album’s 15 tracks, though, the sister trio seems conflicted as to whether they want to fully embrace a safer mainstream approach or follow their bolder instincts. The aforementioned “Gone”—which is based around a sample of George Michael’s beloved “Freedom! ’90” that an accompanying press release hilariously suggests is some kind of deep cut—falls into the latter category, as the track’s midway point is marked by a bluesy, Jack White-esque guitar solo. Haim have boasted in the past that they “can go toe-to-toe with any male rock band and blow them out of the water,” and it’s in moments like these that they make good on that promise.

Less successful is the subdued “Down to Be Wrong,” which pairs an urgent vocal performance with a fairly monotonous musical arrangement. Similarly, “The Farm” is a plodding country-infused ballad that feels more like pastiche than homage, revolving around a trite metaphor in which selling a farm is likened to the end of a relationship.

That the music on I Quit, particularly in its middle section, is often less dynamic than on HAIM’s previous releases makes the album’s lyrical shortcomings even harder to forgive. Adherence to the principles of melodic math results in lines like “I would take off the chain/But you wouldn’t stop the rain” on “Love You Right.” And on “Million Years,” we get an especially big swing and a miss at profundity: “I’d stop every war/Even if it takes a million years.”

By contrast, the album’s most impactful statement is its least pretentious. The jangly, half-sung, half-rapped “Take Me Back” offers a moving collage of formative memories delivered at breakneck speed. Beneath its tongue-in-cheek character portraits—Molly “took a shit in the back of the truck/Didn’t even notice, she was too coked up” and David’s bald spot has become “a parking lot”—is a genuine mourning for what used to be: “All of my friends, I loved, I still love/And all my lovers are locked in time.”

The penultimate track, “Blood on the Street,” offers a blues-inflected sign-off to a heavily drinking ex that’s filled with striking imagery that was hitherto missing from the uncharacteristically uneven I Quit: “I swear you wouldn’t care/If I was covered in blood, lying dead on the street.” And album closer “Now It’s Time,” which cannily samples U2’s “Numb,” proves HAIM to be one of the few acts today who can successfully incorporate such disparate influences as industrial rock and Ray of Light-style new-age pop along with a Vanessa Carlton-esque piano motif, a guitar riff worthy of the Edge, and a wicked drum fill all within the span of three-and-a-half minutes. Though the journey there is rocky, I Quit ends with a roadmap of where HAIM could (and should) head next.