HAIM's 'Women In Music Pt. III' is most revealing album yet
Entretien avec HAIM à l'occasion de la sortie de leur dernier album.
En 2015, les trois soeurs du groupe HAIM sont nominées aux Grammy Awards dans la catégorie "Best New Artist" – c’est le début d’une carrière florissante et de collaborations variées, allant de Taylor Swift à Mumford&Sons. Entretien intimiste, dans le calme d’un Los Angeles confiné, à l’occasion de la sortie de leur troisième album "Women In Music Pt. III".
In a normal world, the sisters of Haim would be looking forward to doing what they love more than anything else. The Los Angeles trio's new album, "Women in Music Pt. III," is set to come out June 26, after which Danielle, Este and Alana Haim were planning to hit the road as they have for years. "Touring for me is weirdly like a significant other," said Este, 34, who plays bass in the group that evolved out of a family band the siblings performed in with their parents. It's getting back home that's tough - the sudden loss of purpose and identity that Este said feels every time like a breakup.
CARVING THEIR OWN PATH
2. "The thought of not being able to play - it's heartbreaking," Este said in a video conference with Danielle and Alana, each from her own home. (A type 1 diabetic, Este said she's been especially serious about maintaining quarantine - so much so, she joked, that she'd recently "burned my face doing a DIY face mask.") "I keep looking through old tour videos and old photos like a total psychopath," she added. Haim's preoccupation with live performance - with the whatever-happens energy of being onstage - signals the band's status as a sort of bridge between rock 'n' roll's past and the pop present. Proudly skilled instrumentalists who aren't opposed to employing the modern studio tricks at their disposal, the women are as admired by veterans like Stevie Nicks and U2 as they are by younger stars such as Taylor Swift, who several years ago took the group on the road as an opening act.
3. Even within the alternative space, Haim's earnest devotion to the classic-rock ethos embodied by the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac makes it an outlier: the rare act capable of speaking to millennial women in language comprehensible by aging dads. "We've always carved our own path," Alana said as her sisters nodded in agreement inside their respective Zoom windows. "And we've always prided ourselves on that."
4. "But also, we're a girl band in rock 'n' roll, and we haven't always been taken seriously," Danielle said. Last month, she was asked by the BBC to record a guitar tutorial for "The Steps," a deliciously fuzzed-out rock tune from the new album. "And the first thing I thought about - because it's a very simple riff - were all the comments: 'This is guitar for 5-year-olds,'" she said, imagining the condescending remarks with a puton sneer. "Why do I go there?" She laughed. "I did the tutorial anyway. But that's why we named the album 'Women in Music Pt. III'" – to goof on anyone still getting accustomed to such an idea.
5. When widespread stayat-home orders came down in March, Haim pushed the abum from an initial April 24 release to later in the summer before finally settling on the date next month. "It feels like we've gotten into a little bit of the new normal with the quarantine," Danielle said. "And we really want it to be out for the summer." With concerts off the table, they've been building toward the release with remote performances on late-night
TV and weekly dance classes the sisters are teaching on Zoom.
ROCK MUSIC FROM L.A
6. And as they did on "Something to Tell You," [their previous album], they recruited director Paul Thomas Anderson – a fellow native of the San Fernando Valley – to make a series of music videos for tracks from "Women in Music Pt. III." Among them are "Summer Girl," which follows the sisters as they stroll through several LA landmarks, including Canter's and the New Beverly Cinema. To see it now is also to feel a pang for a city in shutdown. Asked how they think the pandemic might affect their hometown in the long term, the Haim sisters said they feared that members of the creative middle class – the session musicians and lighting designers that they grew up around in Valley Village – would no longer be able to afford to live here.
7. Their parents, when they weren't leading their daughters in classic rock and soul covers, sold real estate in the Valley. "But their clients weren't rock stars," Danielle said. As kids, the sisters were supported at home as they pursued music; Danielle and Este briefly played in a pre-fab pop group called the Valli Girls that scored a spot on the "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" soundtrack. The three formed Haim around 2007, but the band took a few years to get going.
8. Today the women say they run Haim as a strict democracy. "We always check with each other on everything – even Instagram posts," Danielle said. "I definitely come up with the really funny captions," Este said. "That's what I bring to the band." Yet Danielle, once known as the trio's most retiring member, seems to be stepping into a newly forward role as the band's frontwoman: Several times in our talk, Este and Alana deferred to their sister in answering a question. 9. Then there's the video for "The Steps," in which Este saunters into a bathroom in her underwear. "This is where I get off the call," she said with a laugh when the women were asked about the clip. "It just comes down to us being the most confident we've ever been with our music," said Danielle. "And about how we look." Has that sense of liberation helped ease the disquiet that led Danielle to Haim's new songs – and which the pandemic threatens to extend as it keeps the band offstage? "Not necessarily," she replied. "But this album is an embrace of the chaos."