There’s a paradox at the heart of I Quit. HAIM presents the concept as a spiritual cleansing, in the sense of quitting what doesn’t serve you. (“I quit dick,” “I quit isolation,” “I quit thinking I’m the problem,” “I quit your shit” are some of the examples broadcast at recent HAIM shows.) But anyone who’s resigned from a position knows you may be asked to explain why. After all, you can’t truly quit something without first experiencing it, and articulating the reason you want to move on is integral to the process of quitting. HAIM wants to clear their slate, but they can’t help but look backward to do it.
As the opening statement of I Quit, the first track, “Gone,” is straightforward in theory, but muddled in practice. The first lyric on the album, “Can I have your attention please?” echoes The Rolling Stones’ Sympathy For The Devil. The repetitive cadence in which Danielle Haim lists the ways that she’s leaving her lover gives shades of Paul Simon. Like Bruce Springsteen, she declares she’s “born to run” over an actual sample of George Michael’s “Freedom ’90.” None of it is bad, per se, but it’s a lot of reference points—and where is HAIM in all of this?
Lead single “Relationships” is a much better example of a HAIM song, as good as any they’ve ever released. The sound is in keeping with the band’s previous work, but still fresh; the production is fun, but it doesn’t overwhelm the cool clarity of Danielle’s voice. “Relationships” is also a better example of the ideas animating the record: The push-pull between love and freedom, being exasperated by a situation but drawn to it nevertheless, learning from an experience and moving on from it. Promotional singles “Down To Be Wrong” and “Everybody’s Trying To Figure Me Out” are also high points of the album, and similarly take complicated, thorny ideas and distill them without trying to resolve them. Like the band’s best songs, these tracks have clear reference points (“Everybody’s Trying…” has a Red Hot Chili Peppers-esque Cali-grunge sound) while still feeling and sounding distinctly HAIM.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the rest of the album. At 15 tracks, it’s the longest the band has ever released, and there’s definitely fat that could be trimmed. The front half is stronger than the back half (which, coincidentally or not, features more vocal contributions from sisters Este and Alana). There are still great moments later in the record, like the shoegaze number “Lucky Stars” or the disco-pop-flavored “Spinning.” But even that track feels more like a Dua Lipa B-side than a great HAIM song. This is the recurring issue of I Quit. There are songs that sound like Taylor Swift (“All Over Me”), Stevie Wonder (“Try To Feel My Pain”), Indigo Girls (“Take Me Back”), Tom Petty (“The Farm”), and Vampire Weekend (“Now It’s Gone”)—the latter group used to feature producer Rostam Batmanglij as a member and Danielle as a frequent collaborator. The millennium pop-inflected track “A Million Years” is like a grown-up version of something Danielle and Este would’ve released with their first group, Valli Girls. But overall, the album is missing a definitive, cohesive “HAIM in 2025” sound.
This may be attributable to the absence of Ariel Rechtshaid, the band’s longtime producer and Danielle’s longtime romantic partner. It’s impossible to talk about the album without acknowledging him, both because he’s the presumed subject of many of the breakup songs and because the creative breakup seems to have precipitated a transitional phase for the group. Rechtshaid was part of crafting the “HAIM sound” from their debut album Days Are Gone, and the eclectic mix of vibes on I Quit suggests that his departure sent HAIM searching for a new path forward in a similar manner to throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. This is not to overstate Rechtshaid’s influence on HAIM, or to undermine the work of the Haim sisters; their skillful songwriting and musicianship (as well as widely varied taste and deep knowledge of music history) are evident on I Quit, even if the overall product is scattershot.
The high points of I Quit indicate that HAIM will find their way forward just fine, though on the whole it doesn’t achieve the cohesion of their previous record, Women In Music Pt. III. That album didn’t have one clear theme or thesis. Yet it is the pinnacle HAIM record in terms of lyrics, music, production, and attitude, all of which intersected so perfectly that it earned them their first Album Of The Year Grammy nomination. I Quit has a similar spirit, but it doesn’t have WIMPIII‘s lucidity.
Presenting their fourth album under the conceptual umbrella of “I quit” didn’t result in the kind of cohesive project that could match WIMPIII. Yet the fumbling and experimenting on this record is perhaps the best example of its central thesis. It’s only natural to have a transitional phase after a major life change, whether that’s quitting a job, a relationship, a drug, or anything else. It’s a contradictory time of growth and regression, when the desire to move into the future is often hampered by ruminating on the past. It makes perfect sense, in this moment, for HAIM to try out different sounds like trying on new clothes. The result is messy, sometimes self-indulgent, and not particularly well defined; anyone who’s had their shit rocked by a bad breakup can relate. I Quit may not be the band at their peak, but it’s a necessary step to close one chapter of their career and find their way to the next. It leaves listeners with the sense that HAIM is going to rise from the ashes of what didn’t serve them, onto bigger and better things.
