As a greeting, the Haim hug comes at you like a wave, fast and giddy. It’s a three-fer, embraces from each of the longhaired sisters, Alana, Danielle and Este, of this Los Angeles trio. They’ve descended on a Manhattan studio to record a version of their new single, Want You Back, for Spotify. Their hugs help set a familial tone, but their musicianship is pure pro.
In a ’90s flower-print dress and witchy boots, Este seized a vintage bass. “Gotta warm up the phalanges,” she said, playing a few licks of the White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army. Her sisters, in classic rock tees (ZZ Top, Eurythmics) tucked into ripped jeans, joined in but changed the tune to Bjork’s Earth Intruders. “We are the Earth intruders, we are the sharpshooters,” they sang together, in quick harmony.
In Spotify’s office on a summer Friday, they soon got down to business, unpacking Want You Back, a regretful lover’s plea set against shimmery, hopeful instrumentation, from its layered production — softening the drums, adding and subtracting microphones. Shifting dynamics play a big part in the Haim sound.
BREAKTHROUGH ACT
Haim (it rhymes with time), emerged in 2013 with the critical favourite Days Are Gone, and quickly made its name as a potently dreamy, hooky California group, with a Hollywood-worthy back story — the sisters started performing as children, in a family act with their parents. Now they’re something that’s not as common as it used to be: a major label rock band that takes the idea of being a rock band quite seriously.
While their vintage style made them fashion-world favourites, their music bridged the mainstream — one song was featured in a Target commercial — and the realm of painstakingly made, retro indie-rock. Soon they were opening for, and befriending, Taylor Swift, and receiving gifts of jewellery from Stevie Nicks, who anointed them as part of her sisterhood.
With a sophomore album, Something to Tell You, which came out on Friday, Haim is aiming to show that it belongs there. Next to the pop goddesses who shuffle through songwriting teams and the hip-hop and EDM that dominates streaming services like Spotify, the group’s organic guitar-bass-drums-keys sound is anachronistic, and proudly so.
After nearly four years of worldwide touring, “we really felt on fire as a band,” Danielle said. She’s 28 and the lead vocalist and guitarist; Este, 31, is the bassist; and Alana, 25, plays keyboards, guitar and percussion (she’s nicknamed both Baby Haim and Merlin). When making the record, Danielle said, they wanted “a live, raw sound” that showed off their songwriting, which owes debts to Prince and Fleetwood Mac, Chaka Khan and the Eagles, ’60s girl groups and ’90s R&B but is unmistakably the product of this sibling trinity.
“Each song has the same theme in three different perspectives, from three different women in three different parts of their lives,” Alana said. “This whole thing is 100 per cent us. We wrote every word, every —”
“Melody,” Danielle concluded, as Este nodded in unison.
You can see their process in the lo-fi video for Right Now, shot by Paul Thomas Anderson. In dusky lighting, the trio is alone in a studio, Danielle at the piano. “Gave you my love, you gave me nothing,” she begins, and Este joins in for the chorus — “Now you’re saying you need me, right now” — then comes Alana, with the guitar peals, a counterpoint to the singer’s plaintiveness. It ends with Alana and Este pounding a syncopated rhythm on the drums; the chorus has grown less needy and more defiant.
EVOLUTION IN MUSIC
There was a similar evolution in the studio, said Ariel Rechtshaid, their producer, who also worked on Days Are Gone. That debut was developed over their years as an unknown band gigging around Los Angeles, but Something to Tell You came together in the moment, in sessions that started when they returned to their childhood home in the San Fernando Valley.
Rechtshaid, who has worked with artists from Adele to Usher, was impressed by Haim’s early shows, before it was even signed.
They played at street fairs and charity events, never for money; at home, they pretended to be the Spice Girls (two Sportys, and Este was Ginger) and dissected the classic rock songs and disco numbers their parents listened to.
“That’s how we figured out how to write music,” Alana said.
“And that’s how we learnt how to jam, too,” Este added.
In the Spotify studio, where they were cutting Want You Back with their keyboard player, Tommy King, and touring drummer, Jody Giachello, and Night So Long, a hymnlike Danielle solo, they geeked out over the vintage instruments and revealed the origins of their moves in the Want You Back video — “Mom dance, it’s the coolest,” Danielle said.
“I think the snare doesn’t have to be that meaty,” she said. “It needs to be more snappy.” (Later, she replaced Giachello altogether, with a drum machine.)
“I’m kind of at that point where I know what I want, and I’m going to go out and get it,” she’d said earlier.
That self-assured vibe comes through in their own music, like in Ready for You, a bouncy, synthy come-on to a onetime lover.
“It stemmed from this drum beat and these chords that felt very immediate,” Danielle said, singing them. “At that point, we were just so confident in the record. This song is about knowing what you want —”
“And going after it,” Este said, “and not being apologetic about it.”
