I can barely get the door open from all the emails I’ve let pile up over the past week (if they are from you, I’m sorry - life has a way of happening to you when you aren’t expecting it). I’m stepping straight over all those emails to go out the door and grab you by the shoulders in order to say that actually, all you really need to hear is this.
Haim haven’t given us anything properly new since their debut album in 2014 and then all of a sudden here they are, in all the dramatic glory of this brooding Paul Thomas Anderson shot video. This short five minute take places a viewfinder into the studio for a live take on Right Now, the first song from forthcoming album Something To Tell You.
And it’s pretty perfect in its imperfection. Feedback, Este’s clipped heels, Danielle’s unfussy vocals: it all comes together in a way that just screams how much practice it has taken to make it all look just this effortless.
I’ll call out three moments:
- That first Este “Right now, right now”, cuddled up against a thick as molasses bass line
- When Alana’s guitar just blows 1 out of the bloody water. It’s like varnished oak, speaker magnets and burning incense.
- Both Este and Alana’s drum outro, which gives me goosebumps EVERY SINGLE TIME.
Danielle does stuff too, like pull it all together. It's almost certainly not cool to like Haim any more, but this makes me not care a jot. It’s everything that isn’t here that really makes this what it is... Bags and bags of space, acres of expensive high quality sounding space.