The often-cited statistic that 50 percent of American marriages end in divorce has long been overstated: The divorce rate started sliding from its historical peak way back in 1980. But the myth of the modern marriage being doomed to fail endures because it was seared into the cultural consciousness—like so much else—by Baby Boomers. After the sexual revolution of the ’60s and the legalization of no-fault divorce, they availed themselves of the freedom to leave their spouse—and then parlayed that experience into now-classic movies, books, and rock about going your own way.
Boomers’ children aren’t getting hitched as easily, and those who do are less likely to split up. That’s probably a result of living in an ever more individualized, ever less traditional, and ever more expensive society—and of having studied the cautionary tales of their elders. But Millennials do have their version of divorce rock: the softly grooving Los Angeles band Haim. The group’s three members have never been married, but their new album, I Quit, cleverly remixes the breakup-music canon for a generation that’s wary of tying the knot.
Since their 2013 debut, the Haim sisters—Este (39), Danielle (36), and Alana (33)—have gained fame as pop celebrities who are fluent in TikTok and friends with Taylor Swift. Yet, as a rare band in an era of solo stars, they’re also a throwback. Haim’s songs blend the rollicking chemistry of Fleetwood Mac, the muscular femininity of Heart, and the mystic cheesiness of Phil Collins (with a smattering of new-jack-swing sparkle). But the sisters swap the earnest grandiosity of their influences for cheeky nonchalance, hinting that nothing they sing about is all that serious. In videos, they strut down streets like Tina Turner, except with all of Turner’s outsize emoting replaced by smirks. The band’s great 2013 single, “The Wire,” is about ditching a perfectly nice partner, counseling, “I just know, I know, I know, I know that you’re gonna be okay anyway.”
Though the band’s lyrics have long been preoccupied with breakups, I Quit is the moment these Stevie Nicks disciples attempt their Rumours: a kaleidoscopic and questing pop epic about unraveling commitments (though made in circumstances of sibling solidarity rather than burning tension between bandmates). The three sisters were each single while recording the album, and have marketed that fact by sharing dating horror stories online. The most consequential breakup here is that of the lead singer, Danielle. In 2022, she exited a relationship of nine years with the producer Ariel Rechtshaid, who’d worked on all of the band’s previous albums. The split apparently represented both a personal and an artistic unchaining. Danielle told ID magazine that Rechtshaid took a “searching, labored” approach to recording, whereas I Quit’s lead producer, Rostam Batmanglij, is “quick” and “kinetic.” The album’s title is meant to convey liberation: “The exit is also the entrance,” Este said to GQ.
The music does feel quite unshackled. Haim’s previous and best album, 2020’s Women in Music Pt. III, was a delicate jewelbox of sound, but I Quit is all surge and excess. Its songs go on longer, say more, and do more than is expected or, sometimes, advisable. The opening track’s grating sample of George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90” feels like the result of a dare; a number of genre digressions—into drum and bass, industrial rock, and shoegaze—are amusing but inessential. The highlights, though, are Haim-ian in the best way: instinctual and playful. Incongruous musical styles join up through ingenious, gliding transitions. The arrangements sizzle and fizzle like Pop Rocks thanks to creative instrumentation and digital editing.
The lead single, “Relationships,” is the album’s manifesto: “I think I’m in love but I can’t stand fucking relationships,” Danielle sings. Bickering and restlessness has her running a cost-benefit analysis on her beloved, and the music sounds as confused as she is, rotating from goofy hip-hop to plangent quiet storm to handclap-driven hoedown. Boomers loom in the background: “Oh this can’t just be the way it is / Or is it just the shit our parents did?” Really, it’s not the shit her parents did—they’re long married with three daughters. The narrator of this song, by contrast, sounds barely tethered, like a Mylar balloon on a fraying string.
Which isn’t to say she finds a serious relationship painless to sever. The album serves up the expected outpourings of post-breakup grief (“Cry,” whose elegant melody evokes Annie Lennox), anger (“Now It’s Time,” which interpolates a pounding riff from U2’s Zooropa), and horniness (the country romp “All Over Me”). But its centerpiece tracks march from ambivalence to … a different kind of ambivalence. The excellent “Down to Be Wrong” is the confession of someone defiantly leaving the life they’ve built, all the while maintaining a pit-in-the-stomach terror about the unknown. As the song builds from iciness to fieriness, Danielle conveys a belief in following your own desires—even if you don’t fully understand what those desires are, much less where they’ll take you.
In moments like that, Haim’s music attains a newfound sense of drama: the drama of experiencing life as a purely internal, self-directed struggle. The narrators of these songs don’t worry about betraying an oath or straying from a traditional role; friends and family figure in only as concerned characters wondering whether their newly single buddy is okay. Everyone seems to agree that happiness, or at least liberation, is the noblest goal. But that prerogative to chase self-actualization at all costs brings with it the dread of failure, as heavy as the booming drums that ground the album’s otherwise spry arrangements. At one point, Danielle quotes Bob Dylan in 1965: “How does it feel to be on your own?” She’s repeating a question asked at the dawn of a social revolution whose effects, sonic and spiritual, ripple ever onward.
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