Haim - I quit (2025)

The Haim sisters—Danielle, Alana, Este—have said their fourth album is focused on the freedom of letting go of all kinds of things: worrying about what other people think, shame and guilt, overthinking, facing the music industry's "good for girls" sentiment. But, more than anything, I Quit is clearly a break-up record. Opener "Gone" heavily interpolates George Michael's "Freedom" with a mischievous smirk, swirling in a Stonesy guitar solo and engineer Dave Fridmann's signature super-crisp high-hat and gated snare as Danielle adds her own thoughts: "You can't shame me for what I done/ You can't make me disappear … You don't see me/ It's what I want!" Notably, this is the band's first album without producer Ariel Rechtshaid, Danielle's long-term (now ex) boyfriend. And the production hasn't suffered a lick. Rostam Batmanglij, who was a major multi-instrumentalist on Haim's last two albums, co-produced this one with Danielle—and the result is warm, fresh and idiosyncratic.

While 2020's Women in Music Pt. III felt like a new plane in terms of their songwriting, I Quit shows even more growth; the sisters, whose blood harmony has always been evident, collectively and individually sound better than ever. Danielle's voice, which Stevie Nicks has called "stunning," nimbly travels her full range on songs like "All Over Me." "You really fucked with my confidence," she sings on "Relationships"—an R&B-ish song graced with Este's slippery groove bass and co-written with Clairo, repeat collaborator Tobias Jesso Jr. and, yes, Rechtshaid, in his only album credit.

Let it not be forgotten that the Haim sisters and their friends are also killer musicians: Bluesy—in the vein of the Stones and Janis Joplin—"Blood on the Street" issues a stank-face guitar solo, and Rostam's super warm Wurlitzer and Hammond adds a jolt to "Try to Feel My Pain." Spiritually, there is a clear link between I Quit and Sheryl Crow’s self-titled second album, particularly with husky, hushed "Love You Right," just-countryish "The Farm" and mid-tempo "Everybody's Trying to Figure Me Out." It's there, too, on "Down to Be Wrong," a song about escape that symbolically features charged acoustic guitar and Danielle quietly singing the first verse before she belts the chorus (freedom, indeed).

Verbal strikes and declarations fill the lyrics. "Trying not to get nowhere, getting lost" is the theme of "MIllion Years," which, with its bubble-machine synth and skittering beats, slips and slides but stays on the road (specifically, Ventura Boulevard, which the Valley girls imagine taking straight to the ocean). And epic closer "Now It's Time," which borrows from U2 and includes a Cass McCombs co-write, uses song construction as metaphor: when Danielle, sounding heartwrenched, sings “It’s time…” the music drops out—then she leans directly into your ear to say, “To let go.” From there the song opens up, big and booming. The outlier here, thematically and musically, is "Take Me Back," a giddy lark with jangly guitar, bright harmonica and even brighter sax that finds Danielle speak-singing in a husky voice found nowhere else on the record. More, please.

TRACKLIST

1 Gone
2 All over me
3 Relationships
4 Down to be wrong
5 Take me back
6 Love you right
7 The farm
8 Lucky stars
9 Million years
10 Everybody's trying to figure me out
11 Try to feel my pain
12 Spinning
13 Cry
14 Blood on the street
15 Now it's time