In the opening scene of HAIM’s music video for “Now I’m In It,” a withdrawn Danielle Haim sculls a shot of tequila and heads out the bar to reveal the sober light of day. She heads to work in a diner, where side-eyed and begrudgingly she serves morning coffee, spilling it everywhere. Escaping to a charity shop she hides behind dark glasses and takes a pink rotary phone outside to seemingly call someone, only to violently collapse. The next frame catches her landing on a green, medic’s stretcher. It cuts to a wide shot of her sisters and bandmates Este and Alana—each holding one end of the stretcher as they shuffle across a busy bridge to get her the help she needs. Directed by friend and frequent collaborator, noted film director Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood), the whole video is rich with symbolism. However, the stretcher scene is the most potent and a worthy metaphor of their sisterly bond: No problem is too big or heavy that they can’t tackle it together.
“Now I’m In It” is a standout from their darker-themed but no less sonically uplifting third album, Women In Music Pt III. They prefer its playful acronym WIMPIII: juxtaposing the gravitas of women in music with the idea of a wimp when they’re such badasses is HAIM in a word. The record came out of a lull in their touring schedule but a tumultuous time in their emotional lives—as each wrestled with challenges brought on by depression, disease, and death. Being able to come together to talk about their individual struggles, then write about them was immeasurable in helping them face issues they had long avoided.
Danielle wrote “Summer Girl,” the album’s first single, for her romantic partner, producer Ariel Rechtshaid, who had been battling testicular cancer. “Walk beside me, not behind me,” she intones as a saxophone plays, and “doo doo doo’s” ring out, reminiscent of Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side.” They released it in July 2019, before they had any other songs or idea for a record—counter-intuitive for a band that in pursuit of the perfect sonics had recorded their first EP five times. Or how as fans they consume their music. “We’ve always been girls that listen to full albums,” explains Este Haim, 34, the oldest of the sisters, on our four-way Zoom conference. She is referring to Joni Mitchell
