Haim Tour Finale Review: ‘I Quit’ Concert in California
“I quit lying to yourself.” And,on the wittier side,”I quit clothing,” right before danielle sang “All Over Me,” an outlier on the new album that may count as the band’s lustiest song,which,in thier sexually untimid catalog,is saying something. Also: “I quit winter,” which any fan woudl have known was a LOL segue into ”Summer Girl,” their most feel-good song (which is also saying something).
Redferns
There were other nice touches involving the screens. Like a digital intermission clock of sorts that kept the audience abreast of what percentage of the time between sets had been used up.(The way it suddenly started racing to 100% right before the band came on suggested that the clock may not be fully Seiko-accurate, but it’s the funny idea that counts.) The screens were also used for some more pleasingly abstract purposes, like opening up a central window at the start of the first song to show Danielle singing and strumming in isolation, and then opening similar digital windows on either side for Alana and Este. A larger overhead screen allowed for black-and-white widescreen closeups, and also crowd shots of some of the ladies in the front of the pit exchanging mutually supportive middle fingers with the women on stage, as was appropriate to the song at the time.
As is customary, Danielle got the showier instrumental bits of the night, going from playing some serious fuzz guitar to the mid-show segment that has her kicking it on drums. (The trio has two supplementary players, identified as Nick and Ryan, who bolster and fill in on multiple instruments as needed.) Of the three of them, Este is the one most anchored to a single instrument, her thick-and-thicker bass, but even she set that down at the end of “In It” to join the inevitable number in any Haim concert where all three are pounding simultaneously on kettle drums.(It was their only synchronized move; this tour, they’ve dropped the choreographed dance moment they used to incorporate.) The sense that all three of them can and will trade up instruments is part of the fun: As they cheekily and definitely declared an album ago, they are women in music. For real.
Este got a solo lead vocal number in the soul-emo mode with the latest album’s “Cry,” followed by Alana getting a whole number to herself – the first time that’s happened on a tour, she noted – with the disco-y “Spinning.” (Getting the older crowd in the fixed upper seats in Santa Barbara to do audience-participation moves was tough, but the young people on the floor were into following wherever Alana wanted to lead.) But it’s hardly as if we’d never hear Alana’s voice without that new spotlight slot for her. Haim has a few numbers in the show where they each trade lead vocals, like their acoustic sisterhood anthem “Hallelujah,” and the new, country-flavored “Blood on the Street.” Even fashioned as a group-sing, that latter number allowed Danielle one of her most expressive moments of the night. Following a quirkily bluesy guitar solo, when she got to her closing verse, she started riffing on the song’s lyrics, in mock-anger. “I was UNFAIR?… ME?” Having her set her usual cool aside and act out a little bit of the song’s latent psychodrama for a few moments was a kick.
For all the fun and games at a Haim show, it’s good to have those few moments that reinforce that, especially on record, they’re not always kidding around.I appreciated the way the show was bookended with some of the tentative and yet tough-minded breakup songs from the latest album, even though the usual touring rule would be to begin and end with the greatest hits.As an opener, “Gone” was rabble-rouser enough, with its power cords and slow-burning eff-you attitude (and George Michael “Freedom” interpolation).And it was surprising to see them close out the encore with “down to Be Wrong,” a kind of mid-tempo slammer that comes smack in the middle of the latest album. When you heard it land there,it made sense: There’s something deeply and surprisingly anthemic about hearing Danielle,over some heavy electric strumming,singing the simple words: “Down to be wrong / Don’t need to be right.” Not needing to be correct at all times, when some kind of action needs to be taken – that might really count as some hard-earned, feisty wisdom to send a crowd home mulling as their parting earworm.
The name of this road show was,of course,the “I Quit Tour,” so maybe it had nothing to do with it being the end of the tour that,at the very end of the night,that ticker behind the stage brightly declared: “HAIM QUITS.” A good little gag, in a night that had a lot of them. But it underscored just how much they spent the final night of their outing sounding the very opposite of resigned.