The trio relaxed, expanded their sound and created their first masterpiece, full of relationship vignettes that felt true to life
“As soon as you stop looking, you’ll find it.” This is something that single people in search of love always get told, and it’s very annoying – doubly so when it invariably turns out to be true. Music is perhaps the same way: if you set off to find the perfect partner you’ll end up walking past them, and if you try to write the perfect song, it’ll get away from you. Then when you’re idly working on something else, there it suddenly is.
On their third album and first masterpiece, Haim sound like a band who stopped looking; who took their eyes off the prize and found it at their feet. It should be underlined that the sororal US trio’s previous albums, Days Are Gone (2013) and Something to Tell You (2017) are very good: slick without smoothing too much over, and while they felt tense and even airless at times, the licks they were playing were meant to be tight.