My Top 100 Albums: #78 - HAIM, ‘Women in Music Pt. III’

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78.

HAIM, ‘Women in Music Pt. III’

Columbia, 2020

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For those who have been familiar with HAIM since their early work, the sororal trio of Danielle, Este and Alana seem like one of the bubbliest, most benign bands in the music industry. Known for their ironic wit and energetic performances, as well as their trademark country-influenced jangle pop and soft rock, HAIM’s first two albums were somewhat cheery affairs that earned them some recognition as musically-gifted up-and-comers. The period between releasing Something to Tell You in 2017 and Women in Music Pt. III in 2020, however, was a period of personal tragedy for all three of the sisters: the cancer diagnosis of Danielle’s partner, and the album’s producer, Ariel Rechtshaid, the death of a close friend to Alana, and Este’s continual struggles with type 1 diabetes. WIMPIII, as the band chooses to abbreviate it, is both a reaction to these events in the sisters’ personal lives and an exploration of the interplay between music and the more everyday context it exists within. The resulting LP is a macrocosm of wall-to-wall bangers - by far the band’s strongest offering to date and one of the great indie pop releases of its time. The record leans unashamedly on its mainstream pop influences whilst not being afraid to explore unique instrumentation, musical styles and production techniques. At first listen, I thought that Danielle’s excellent vocals were being buried too far down in the mix, but now I realise the way this helps to reinforce the album’s overall feeling of claustrophobia, of the inexorable wave of trauma that life inflicts on you, of one’s inability to rationalise and thus formulate plans to deal with life’s exigencies, whether it’s the conflict between individualism and intimacy on The Steps, or the sexism of the music industry on Man from the Magazine. All of this is second, however, to the fantastic music on display here. The band shows that it is equally capable of producing the dreamy electronica of I Know Alone, the rhythmic electropop of Now I’m In It and the countrified pop rock of Gasoline. With the adroit production of Rechtshaid and (formerly of Vampire Weekend) Rostam Batmanglij, this album is one of the most diverse fundamental pop efforts of the current trend and much deserving of its Grammy nods.

Hidden Highlight: Gasoline

1. Los Angeles

2. The Steps

3. I Know Alone

4. Up From a Dream

5. Gasoline

6. 3AM

7. Don’t Wanna

8. Another Try

9. Leaning on You

10. I’ve Been Down

11. Man from the Magazine

12. All That Ever Mattered

13. FUBT

14. Now I’m In It

15. Hallelujah

16. Summer Girl

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See the full list so far here:

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