Go Slow

In late July last year the sisters dropped “Summer Girl”, a lulling breeze of bassline and sauntering sax, its hooks subtle but arresting. October brought sad-banger “Now I’m In It”, and less than a month later the trio released the sombre but uplifting “Hallelujah”. There had to be a new record on the way, right?

“That wasn’t the plan,” deadpans Este, whilst Alana exclaims, “Is that what people think? Fuck.” In fact, the three tracks acted like a catalyst for an album that will finally take life next Friday, a mere eleven months after “Summer Girl” slinked its way into our sun-kissed subconsiouses.

A few things you need to know: The story of HAIM’s roots has been well covered. The band began as family affair Rockenhaim, the sisters playing with mum, Donna and dad, Moti. Este studied Ethnomusicology at University, Danielle cut her teeth playing with Julian Casablancas and Jenny Lewis. As soon as Alana was old enough they began gigging around LA. They’re a close family, I’d forgotten how close. Interviewing them was always a game of trying to pick apart who’d started and who’d finished which sentence on which absurdist tangent. And they have a warmth that’s addictive. That phrase ‘giving me life’? Being with HAIM feels like they’ve put you on a drip of their own caffeinated souls.

I spent a lot of time with the sisters around their debut album, Days Are Gone, released in 2013. It was like stepping into a heightened reality full of transatlantic flights and FaceTimes, dressing rooms, tour buses, press ops, parties and celebs. The momentum around the trio was tangible. Everyone wanted their minute of ‘HAIM Time’, myself included.

But then things seemed to stall. It’s cliché to talk of a difficult second record, but that’s what happened. Off the back of a tour opening for Taylor Swift who was riding on the success of 1989, Danielle’s partner and the band’s producer Ariel Rechtshaid was diagnosed with testicular cancer.

“It was like, we’d come off tour and we’re gonna make a record and then Ariel got this news,” says Este. “I think collectively all of us were just shell-shocked and so scared. Also as sisters, Alana and I were trying to be the rock for both of them and trying to make sure that everyone was OK at all times. I think the thing that we missed was you also have to deal with the things that are going on in your life, and we weren’t really doing the best job at that. We were just nose to the grindstone, we have shit to do, and in hindsight maybe there should have been more self-care happening, but we didn’t know any different.”

The band’s second record, Something To Tell You, was released in 2017, four years after their debut. Ironically, telling people what was up wasn’t part of the plan. It wasn’t their news to tell. Whilst the record picked up good reviews and tracks like “Want You Back” formed cornerstones of their catalogue, it felt like there was a different energy running through the campaign.

HAIM were always the life and soul of the party, and then the afterparty. Constantly on the road playing visceral shows and turning it on in interviews with admirable aplomb, they were perfect chaos. But add the pressure of making a follow-up record whilst a loved one, who’s also integral to your creative process, is ill? And then doing the campaign cycle still smiling? In giving us life, they gave away a little too much of their own.

“I think that my sisters and I, we’ve always been so incredibly driven, but I think now with the benefit of hindsight we realise that it’s important to take care of this guy, but also this guy,” says Este, pointing to her body and her head. “And I think that’s kind of where we landed when we were making Women In Music Pt. III. We all came back from tour and we realised, oh fuck. I think we talk about a lot of these themes, about this feeling of running away from your problems and running away from the shit that’s occupying your brain and bringing you down.”

“We had a lot to write about!” interrupts Alana. “Let me tell you. We had a whole lot of stuff to write about and that’s why there’s sixteen songs on this fucking record!”

But what a fucking record. Alana describes “Summer Girl” as their ‘angel song’, the track that set off the creative process and freed them up to embrace their own spontaneity. “I think if we didn’t have that experience with “Summer Girl”, this record would have been completely different,” she says. “There was so much joy and life making that song that it just really set us off on this path of making ‘Wimpy’, and it just kept going.”

“Honestly, when we put out “Summer Girl”, it wasn’t like we were working towards an album at the time. We didn’t know what it was going to be,” continues Este, as Alana jumps back in, “It was called fucking “Summer Girl”. Rostam (Batmanglij, co-producer) was like, it’s June, you either put it out now or you wait a year to put it out. And we were like, well we don’t want to wait a year for next summer. We never have a fucking plan. We’re very impulsive.”

“We like to write the lyrics that we write and tie them up in a really shiny upbeat package - but it’s a little deceptive, because we’re writing about, most of the time, some pretty heavy shit" - Este Haim

So it was never the plan to release six singles ahead of the album? “No, no, no,” they chorus across multiple video screens. “I could comfortably say, no,” laughs Alana. “I wish, I wish that we could say yah, everything is meticulously thought out,” continues Este. “We’re not those bitches.”

The trilogy of new material from last year closes the album. Alana calls them ‘credit songs’, their discography says ‘bonus tracks’. “Summer Girl” is well-documented as taking seed during the time Danielle was away from Rechtshaid whilst he was receiving treatment. “Hallelujah” embraces their bond as sisters tackling Este’s travails with type 1 diabetes and the loss of Alana’s close friend Sammi Kane Kraft. “Now I’m In It” tracks a battle with depression. It sounds like a bleak farewell, but there’s always light in their darkness.

"We like to write the lyrics that we write and tie them up in a really shiny upbeat package. But it’s a little deceptive, because we’re writing about, most of the time, some pretty heavy shit,” explains Este.

“I got a call from my dad after “Now I’m In It” came out and he was like, ‘are you OK?’” laughs Alana.

“We’re still figuring it out,” Este continues. “We’re all in therapy. I look forward to it every week. I think that looking at mental health is something that, growing up there was such a stigma attached to it. As an adult I had to look at myself and be like, you know what, if I need to be on an SSRI I’m gonna be on an SSRI. I truly benefit from being on medication. And the combo of having therapy and being on meds has truly made me, I think, a better sister, a better friend and a better girlfriend.”

Listening to the record, you can hear the benefit of their recent introspection and time out. It’s direct, self-assured and it feels like they’re having fun, pulling tricks from an expanse of pop-culture references. “3 AM” could be wearing All Saints’ cargo pants, while “Man from the Magazine” is cuttingly sardonic, balancing realism with defiance. Sonically, it’s rich and warm, eclectic in its organic instrumentation and dynamic composition. There’s an intimacy there too, a space for the listener. “I think we consciously wanted to make a more raw record this time and make it sound like you were almost in the room while we were making it,” explains Danielle, who co-produced with Rechtshaid and Rostam Batmanglij, formerly of Vampire Weekend. “I think that a really important part of the sonic landscape was that you could hear a lot of air in it and that it was kind of super raw sounding.”

The album jumps from indie-rock to slick alt-pop to left-field RnB with fluid ease. For a band who have spoken about their frustration with those that don’t know where to place them, doesn’t making an album so genre-defying perpetuate that problem?

“I was starting to feel like we can’t be complex because it’s gonna end up hindering us,” Danielle starts, “But at the end of it I do feel like some of it had to do with us being girls with guitars. That’s how it felt to me. I think on this album we were just like, y’know what? I don’t fucking care. Because one of the things we heard with “Summer Girl” was, ‘we don’t know what this is’. And that is what excites us. Because that’s actually the type of music that I like to hear, where you can’t put this shit in a box, y’know?”

Whilst the cons of evading easy definition may be evidently present, you don’t get played on a certain radio station or featured on a certain festival bill, the pros burn slow. Sticking to your own creative path may not reward with instant wins, but it's a journey that can result in quality and longevity. And with HAIM it feels like they’re in it for the long-haul, building a family of collaborators and a legacy of artistic endeavors.

The band began working with Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia, Boogie Nights) on the Valentine film shot during the Something To Tell You campaign. Of their past five official videos, he’s directed four. It feels like once HAIM find someone they love to work with, they keep them.

“First of all, the fact that we can keep Paul? I mean, I wish we could keep Paul,” laughs Alana. “This feels very Casper, like, ‘can I keep you?’ We’re definitely not like that. But I think when we find people that let us feel free to create and it’s an open space and it’s an open dialogue of bouncing back ideas, it’s hard to find those people. Those people are not just around all the time. And it took us a long time to find Ariel. Working with him is incredible.

"And then Rostam came in and we were always big fans of Vampire Weekend, and when Paul came in… Really the reason why we love Paul so much is just, to his core, he is a music lover. A true love of music, like no one I’ve ever seen before. Like, we’re musicians, I love music, but Paul, he studies it. And you can see it in his movies. So he’s just been the best cheerleader. We show Paul music before we show anybody else.”

"...we never have a plan, because we literally love to shut people out until like the last second" - Alana Haim

“Well that’s how it started, right?” prompts Este. The band played Anderson “Summer Girl” before anyone else had heard it, not even their management. “That’s probably why we never have a plan, because we literally love to shut people out until like the last second,” cracks Alana. Forty-eight hours after sharing the track, Anderson and the band were running around LA shooting the music video.

“He was like, we need to shoot a music video for this,” Alana laughs. “We sent him the song idea, and he was like, I need to ruminate on it and he came back and he was like, honestly this song just feels like being in the valley as a kid and having all these layers of clothing on when you come back from school and you see a pool in the distance and you just fucking take everything off and jump in the pool. And we were like, OK, I don’t know what that means but I’m into it, let’s go. None of us have pools and so we were like, why don’t we just run around LA and just take layers of clothes off? And that we did, with zero permits. It was Paul, and he was literally in a wheelbarrow. It was so DIY...”

“Like, calling in favours like, can we run into Canter’s?” continues Este.

“And nobody in the restaurant cared. Canter’s is like the most LA, like literally no one could give a shit,” laughs Danielle.

“I’m not going to lie,” smiles Este, “It was fun being like, haha this isn’t planned. We didn’t even tell our label. We didn’t tell management.”

Instead the band had to take an emergency flight to New York to present the video and track to said record label. “We already had everything and we were thinking, oh yeah, we’ll just put it out and then we were like, oh fuck we need to tell people that this is happening. Fuck,” Alana laughs. “We flew to New York and we were like, hey, errr, so, present! It’s done and we want to put it out. And they were like, ‘when did you.. do... what is happening?!’ We were calling Paul after the meeting like, we’re all signs go! We didn’t fuck up, I swear!”

The cover for Women In Music Pt. III was shot at Canter's Deli in LA by Anderson, the sisters taking a no-shit stance in front of a row of dangling sausage and a sign declaring ‘Now Serving 69.’ So, whose idea was that?

“That was just there!” they protest, almost in unison. “Literally, we walked in and that was the number that they were on. And we were like mmmmm, yeah, let’s keep it,” grins Alana. “I think this is fate telling us that we need to have ‘serving 69,’” smiles Danielle.

“Honestly, the only art direction that we really gave, because Paul is a masterful man, was that we put in all the vegan sausages that were hanging in the back,” Este explains. “Those were all us. It’s vegan sausages, and fake ones.”

Naming the record Women In Music Pt. III while posing at a sausage party was never accidental. There’s a level of self-awareness to all that the sisters do. It’s especially evident in this album’s lyrics which take a renewed focus on storytelling. Tracks like “I Know Alone” and “I’ve Been Down” are immersive, drawing the listener in. It’s not that allusions or metaphors take a back seat, lustful highlight “Gasoline” is testament to how well a little mystery works, but more that the band aren’t afraid to open up and share their experiences.

Working with Batmanglij pushed the sisters further in their writing. “He’s such an amazing cheerleader and is always like keep going, keep pushing, keep playing,” explains Este. “I think we need that. There’s only so much we can do as sisters to push each other before we’re like, dude lay off. But to have someone on the outside, almost like a coach being like you guys can dig deeper, if this is the feeling you’re trying to convey, what does this mean? Keep going. And I think that is something that Rostam does really well.”

There’s a fine balance of bravery on the album. The humility to expose vulnerability with lyrics that hold emotional weight, but also being unafraid to embrace brazen production gags, the yawn at the start of “Up From A Dream” or panning left and right on said directions in “The Steps”. It makes for a record that never gets heavy, there’s a new subtlety to discover with every play.

The band were geared up for a quick pre-summer release. They announced the album in March to tie in with a performance on Fallon. And then everything stopped.

“We were like, what?" deadpans Danielle. “We had so much energy, we were ready. And at that point the album, it was like a month and a half between when we announced it to when it was gonna come out, which is actually kinda quick. But we had been releasing songs so it felt like, alright, let’s just put it out. And then it was just a complete stop, which was intense. And now we’re essentially... it’s taken a year.”

“That wasn’t the plan!” Alana exclaims. “This was gonna be our quickest album we ever put out, and y’know what?!”

They flew home from filming in New York, which had quickly become the centre of the US’ coronavirus outbreak, and immediately went into isolation. Este was particularly worried as reports ran that those with type 1 diabetes were of high risk. “That was terrifying. We basically went into quarantine on my birthday and I didn’t spend my birthday with anyone. I baked myself a diabetic-friendly cupcake and blew out a candle,” she half-jokes.

She continues, “I didn’t really see Danielle or Alana for a month. I saw them over FaceTime, but I went a little stir crazy, and also while this was happening, a really, really, really close family member of ours got covid and went to the hospital. Didn’t have to be intubated, but every day it was like, we don’t know. So all three of us are going stir crazy in our respective homes, freaking out about the fact that someone so close to us could potentially die. So it wasn’t a hard decision to just be like, we need time. It sucked. But I don’t think it’s ever deterred us from how excited we are about the music. I mean, I feel like you can hear how stoked we were to make it on record.”

“I do think that this is my favourite record that we ever made,” smiles Danielle.

I couldn’t agree more. Women In Music Pt. III is more than worth the wait.