HAIM: Live in NYC
Madison Square Garden // NYC
Review by Gus Rocha
It’s hard to think of a more venerable music venue than New York City’s Madison Square Garden. Since opening its doors in February of 1968, the multi-purpose indoor arena that faithfully doubles as the home of the NBA’s New York Knicks and the NHL’s New York Rangers has hosted an enviably long list of high-profile acts. A cursory skim through the stadium’s fifty-four-year history reveals many a current or future rock-and-roll hall-of-Famer. Among the several legendary names to have graced “The Garden’s” hallowed stage, one can find the likes of Tina Turner, The Rolling Stones, B.B. King, John Lennon, Led Zeppelin, Elvis Presley, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Billy Joel, and Lady Gaga. The full list is so extensive that it could easily serve as a trustworthy who’s-who guide to pop and rock music’s last half-century.
It’s at this famed site, below the retired jerseys of notable figures in the Knicks organization like Red Holzman, Bill Bradley, Dave Debuscschere, and Patrick Ewing and two blue-and-orange banners commemorating the franchise’s memorable NBA title runs in 1970 and 1973, that the San Fernando Valley-bred sister power-trio of Danielle, Este, and Alana Haim take the stage in front of an audience of 20,000 screaming fans. The thirteenth stop in a 30-plus date tour of North America, this is the band’s first headlining appearance at the celebrated venue. To make the occasion feel even more momentous, the group is playing to a sold-out crowd.
For anyone unfamiliar with the sisterly trio, the group broke into the music scene following the release of their EP, Forever, in the fall of 2012. An overnight sensation with critics and tastemakers, the band immediately began a lengthy European tour as the opening act for indie-pop darlings Florence and the Machine, followed by a tour of North America in support of Mumford and Sons. Throughout that time, between festival appearances that included a slot at Glastonbury in the UK in the summer of 2013, the band managed to record their debut LP, Days Are Gone, released in September of that year. Hailed as a success by numerous mainstream and independent outlets, the record successfully catapulted the HAIM sisters into the indie-rock stratosphere.
Over the following years, the group built lasting personal relationships with many perennial A-listers in the entertainment industry, including global pop icon Taylor Swift, who invited the band for portions of her globe-trotting 1989 World Tour in 2015, and acclaimed film director Paul Thomas Anderson. It’s with the latter that the sisters began a flourishing and collaborative relationship around the time of the release of their second album, Something to Tell You, in 2017. Since then, this relationship has resulted in Anderson directing a total of eight of the band’s last eleven music videos, shooting the cover of the group’s third album, 2020’s Grammy-nominated Women in Music pt. iii, and perhaps, most notably, casting youngest sister Alana in the starring role of his latest theatrical venture, Licorice Pizza.
It’s on the heels of this critical and commercial success, one which the band members have managed to enjoy and sustain even through multiple tour cancellations resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, that the HAIM sisters get to check another item off the proverbial bucket list. Before an ecstatic and roaring crowd of mostly millennial and gen-Z audience members, lead singer and HAIM de facto bandleader, Danielle, strolls confidently onto the stage, her bordeaux Gibson SG swinging at her side. Astutely measuring the crowd’s growing anticipation,
she begins to strum her instrument, the distorted opening chords from the group’s 2019 single “Now I’m In It” echoing loudly throughout the arena. Within moments, her sisters Este on bass, and Alana on guitar, join her to the delight of an audience whose composure and sanity hang by a feeble thread. The sisters take their time, harmonizing the song’s swelling opening lines, tantalizing the audience before drummer Kane Ritchotte dispels the rising tension as he lets the beat snap through a thick haze of smoke and distortion. The One More Haim Tour has officially pulled into Madison Square Garden.
To talk about HAIM as a musical unit is, in many ways, to predictably talk about them as a family. The sisters began performing from an early age in a Partridge-family-styled band with their father Moti and mother Donna. This familial feeling organically extends to their fans who don’t shy away from expressing their devotion to the group. On their first show at The Garden, this connection was undoubtedly palpable. Unquestionably the most memorable and heartfelt moments of the night involved impromptu interactions with the audience that made the larger-than-life venue take on a small and intimate air. Whether stomping through one of their tried-and-tested stadium rockers or their many endearing acoustic numbers, the measure of success for both the band and the evening could be found in the audience’s willingness and ability to collectively morph into the “fourth Haim sister.”
This crucially personal live relationship with the audience is not something that many artists can easily pull off. In fact, I would argue that most acts struggle to pull it off at all. And yet, what makes the Haim sisters such an anomaly, particularly in a day and age when regular people are seemingly so desensitized to the existential gulfs that separate celebrities from the fans who confer onto them their privileged social status, is their sheer relatability. No matter if one is a longtime fan or a first-time attendee at one of their shows, it’s almost impossible not to feel drawn in by the trio’s irresistibly casual charm. Whether it’s bassist Este prefacing a number on which she sings lead by sharing a personal story about past hookups, or Danielle relating a hurtful anecdote at a music store, there is an undeniable sense of plainspoken relatability that makes the band members feel less like celebrity performers and more like lifelong confidants one can turn to for words of encouragement or a slice of wisdom. At the group’s debut performance at Madison Square Garden, this indispensable quality made it possible to appreciate the unfiltered and unifying power of art and its ability to build personally meaningful communities out of disparate groups of regular individuals.
As a cis-gendered heterosexual male, rock music has always been a given. It is something that I and millions of others like me have always taken for granted. But to be an anonymous face, in a crowd full of people whose identities widely differ from mine, watching three remarkably talented performers recount the myriad of cultural and systemic hurdles overcome just to perform on that stage undeniably underscores the irrepressible power at the heart of the genre. To witness an iconic venue full of people whose voices and perspectives have yet to be absorbed into rock music’s narrow mythology, singing at the top of their lungs, and cheering for a guitar-wielding band in 2022 is enough to rekindle a genuine hope in a genre whose cultural relevance has long been on life support. Mostly because it speaks to the deepest parts of our personal and collective imaginations, inviting us to actively partake in the crucial and complex
process of myth-making. Because it’s part of an experience no less inspiring or powerful than seeing Jimmy Page or Eric Clapton grace that same stage.
From a formal and conventional point of view, the Haim sisters’ show at Madison Square Garden was as polished and impressive as one would expect from an act worthy of the venue. And without a doubt, HAIM owned every inch of real estate throughout the evening. Yet it’s not the near-faultless setlist, the string of hard-stomping heavy-hitters, or the admirable technical and performative abilities of a band who’s indisputably seasoned and quite at home in front of a live audience that made the night memorable. But, rather, the humility and humanity through which the group honored their loyal relationship with their fans while conveying a powerful and effective message: “We did it. We’re here, and so are you.”