Album Review: HAIM – I Quit

I took on this review on with the memory of HAIM’s early 2000’s blend of sharp pop and raw emotion that cemented them as a vital force in modern American rock. Sisters Danielle, Alana, and Este return with their fourth studio album, I Quit, released via Columbia and Polydor, and Co-produced by Danielle and Rostam Batmanglij. The record was shaped during a transformative time of personal breakups and their first album without long-time collaborator Ariel Rechtshaid. The fifteen tracks of I Quit aimed to be a more lo-fi, California-infused folk-rock/Americana album, demonstrating vulnerability, creative freedom and self-reclamation with an intimate, genre-blurring confident album – so let’s dive right in and look to see if the sisters can fill this remit!!

Kicking off with Gone, a well-constructed track which heavily leans on George Michael’s classic Freedom, the band show they mean business – distorted guitar riffs in a track that builds throughout… it’s probably my favourite track on the album. How do you follow that?  All Over Me is the answer, in a lo-fi Americana belter, whilst Relationships gives a little Janet Jackson late 90’s R’n’B pop vibe. The tracks continue to feel like tribute tracks, with Down to Be Wrong (which would be right at home on Sheryl Crow’s self-titled 1996 album) and Take Me Back (FUN It Gets Better), and The Farm (Rolling Stones’ You Can’t Always Get What You Want) while intersecting the latter two is Love You Right, which feels like generic modern country track.

The feeling of ‘I’ve heard this from another song before’ continues with the snare beat from Beck’s Loser on Lucky Stars – but I actually really like this track… but then I really like the instrument set up on Loser too. Million Years follows, and has a very David Gray White Ladder quality to it, while Everybody’s Trying to Figure Me Out is another lovely track, straight from the California folk-rock handbook. Hammond organ keys introduce the lo-fi yet funky Try to Feel My Pain, which feels like a modern take on Ray Charles instruments (I love it), whilst Spinning feels like a HAIM attempt at a modern pop-rock track (I don’t like it), and Cry sounds very vocally like PiNK singing a modern country up-tempo ballad (of sorts). Penultimate track Blood on the Street has a bluesy feel to it, and HAIM round off the album with Now It’s Time – an instantly forgettable Americana track.

Brrrrrr…. I Quit is… ok. Some of the tracks are great, some instantly forgettable, some unique, some sounding like tributes to other artists.  It’s not HAIM at their peak – in fact you could say that this could be the last hurrah of the band as they move on to grow in their own individual directions. I don’t think I’ll be adding any tracks to my 2025 Spotify faves, but I don’t regret having had to listen to it either – make of that what you will.

Graeme R