Today the world is a little better because Haim are back. The authors of ‘Women in Music Pt. III’ (2020), one of the best albums of the 21st century, have launched the first advance of their fourth album, in which they pondered the value of sentimental relations in their life.
In ‘Relationships’, Danielle, Este and Alana reflect on why they fall, again and again, in unhealthy relationships that last “seventeen weeks” (it should be noted that it has recently committed itself) and that they do not even seem based on a “friendship.” Relationships that seem founded on love, but collapse as castles in the air. They wonder if their way of approaching relations is inheritance of their “parents”, or symptom of their youth. The conclusion is that they do not have the most remote idea of how to make them work. Neither they, nor anyone.
As a result, Haim choose to remain single. Perhaps, therefore, the sound of ‘relationships’ is light and summer but melancholic. In his personal style, Haim proposes a mixture of soft-rock, R&B and funk that changes beat in his second half, pointing to a psychedelic cut hip-hop. The video clip, co-starring actor Drew Starkey, is a cake of pastel tones.
‘Relationships’ also sounds similar to the Haim of the previous three albums, and the reason is that it is a song written in 2017. Haim composed it during the sessions of ‘Women in Music Pt. III’ (it was the first they wrote), the same year they threw their second album, ‘Subthing to Tell You’, but they kept it in a drawer until it made sense to recover it.
Haim have worked in ‘Relationships’ and their fourth album with producer Rostam Batmanglij, that is, for the first time they have not stung stone with Ariel Rechtshaid in the study. In an interview with Id Magazine, Daniele tells that Rostam is faster and more spontaneous working, and that Ariel is the opposite. However, Ariel appears as co-author of ‘Relationships’, along with Tobias Jesso Jr., being an ancient piece.
In the same interview, Haim reveals that his new album opens with a theme called ‘Gone’ that samples the “ 90 ‘choir by George Michael. It does not surprise that the cover of ‘Relationships’ recreates the famous photo of Nicole Kidman freshly divorced from Tom Cruise at the exit of the court: Freedom seems to go the thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doi_qtmk8ks
