No one is really under the illusion that breakups are enjoyable. You have devoted all this time and energy to a person that you deeply love and care about, only to reach a point where it doesn’t really feel enjoyable, where the two of you are growing apart fundamentally. Maybe you try to work through it, but sometimes it’s easier to throw your hands up and quit; sever any ties. That’s the approach HAIM take on their latest album, appropriately titled I quit, as they try and work their way through a crumbling long-term relationship, wondering if they should even be with this person or the entire concept of relationships “is it just some shit our parent’s did?”
The problem is that quitting something is not an experience that really inspires any swelling emotions; it’s probably why there are no great songs written about the experience of quitting smoking. Even if it’s for the best, the decision to step away can often feel like hanging in a limbo, waiting for something better to grab onto, and this space, this void, is where, unfortunately, HAIM spend most of their time on I quit. A clear example of this is the lead single ‘Relationships’, which lyrically depicts an existential view of this relationship, rumoured to be between lead singer Danielle Haim and the band’s former producer Ariel Rechtshaid, pondering if letting “an innocent mistake / turn into seventeen days” is really worth it if the connection itself seems to be faltering. The problem is that the production seems to be operating in an entirely different sphere – it’s minimalist, with most of the song being a simple drum line and the occasional synth riff. It doesn’t give Danielle Haim any room vocally to get into the emotions behind it, simply towing along with the meandering drums, unable to reach above it.
There are tracks on I quit where HAIM is able to effectively capture a moment in the ongoing cycle of this fractured relationship
This timbre is one that defines a handful of songs on the album, weighing it down. Connecting to the sensations HAIM are conveying are much harder when every few songs you’re hit with a song like ‘lucky stars’, an exploration of the earlier days of a faded relationship, built on questions of “Was it fate or coincidence / That brought you into my life?” and references to Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise, only for it to be built on a stagnant guitar chord and sparse drums.
However, this feeling of limbo isn’t one that permeates through every song on the album. There are tracks on I quit where HAIM is able to effectively capture a moment in the ongoing cycle of this fractured relationship. ‘Take me back’ feels like an inversion of ‘Want You Back’ off their album Something To Tell You – both songs looking back on a lost love – but ‘Take me back’ has a yearning, almost cloying nature to it as the narrator looks at all the people around them, only able to see time slip away from them, like a guy who “had a bald spot, now it’s a parking lot” and a friend Molly who “wanted to be a dancer, but had no luck” all to bring it back to the refrain of “take me back” a phrase that is repeated over and over. Where ‘Want You Back’ has a defiant shine from being able to leave behind a relationship, ‘Take me back’ pleads for its return, even if it seems like an increasingly hard thing to do.
Although I quit isn’t a perfect album, there is a draw to it
Intermittently, I quit lashes out, it has a brashness and a self-indulgence to it that characterises some of the strongest moments on the album. The opening track ‘Gone’ samples George Michael’s ‘Freedom 90!’ for an eternally building prelude to something that just feels slightly out of reach. Whilst “I’ll do whatever I want” is sung with conviction, it never feels tenable, the cries for freedom over an ever-rising guitar riff that you yearn to reach. ‘Down to be wrong’ is a slightly more mannered reimagining of Alanis Morrissette’s ‘You Ougtha Know’ with choruses that scream about how “I bet you wish it could be easy, but it’s not this time” and crushing up pills, but even then the vindictiveness and self-destruction depicted isn’t fully realised. Not every angry break up song needs to ask “Is she perverted like me? / Would she go down on you in a theatre?” as Morrissette does, but it should be able to hold the emotion within it, punctuating the details in a way that ‘Down to be wrong’ isn’t always able to do.
Although I quit isn’t a perfect album, there is a draw to it, to trying to understand the emotions that flow throughout this relationship that’s long since run its course. Admittedly, it’s probably a bit too long and there are moments where you feel as though you are surrounded by nothing but the repeated question of “why am I in this relationship?”, but in the end you accept that even through those moments, the relationship itself was an important thing for both of you. It is possible to reflect on it with some hindsight, to take a more holistic approach to the whole affair and even joke, “I never gave two fucks anyway?”
Words: Erin Lewis
Photos: Press
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