Haim are a 3 piece girl band comprising of sisters Danielle (Guitar, Lead Vocals) Alana (Guitar, Keyboards, Vocals) and Este (Bass, Vocals). With a fresh but retro sound that infuses classic rock songwriting with RnB textures, the band are quickly making a name for themselves among the music press along with a fast growing legion of fans. Hit The Floor were lucky enough to speak to Danielle and Este about their influences, The Backstreet Boys and supporting Strokes superstar Julian Casablancas.
HTF: Have you seen much of Brighton today?
Danielle: Yeah, while we’re here, we did a photo-shoot on the beach earlier.
HTF: How would you go about describing your sound to people who have not hear you before?
Danielle: It’s a mixture of a lot of things, it’s really just from going about in LA, you were always in a car. Like, you could literally not get around without being in a car and in any car there’s always traffic so you’ve always got the radio on. In LA we have the most amazing, amazing radio stations KIIS FM, the pop station. Then there’s K Earth 101, the oldies station. Our music is literally an accumulation of these sounds in cars. What we grew up on with my parents and then when I went to school we had TLC and Mariah Carey. So that’s all moulded our sound.
HTF: I was gonna say being from LA – has that influenced your sound? – but you’ve pretty much answered it there… How do you find English audiences compared to America?
Danielle: So much fun – the English audiences are crazy. This is the first tour that people really know the words to ‘Forever’, not even to ‘Forever’ but songs we haven’t released yet like ‘The Wire’ and ‘Let Me Go’. It’s crazy to hear the words you’ve written in your bedroom sung back to you. It’s like every night is crazy here.
HTF: You’ve opened in the past for Julian Casablancas and Ke$ha in the past – have you learnt much from those experiences?
Danielle: Oh yeah, I mean all those people are interesting hard workers. With Julian Casablancas, we grew up on The Strokes, we loved them growing up. It was really like your idol being like, “hey you wanna come tour with me?” It really was one of those moments where you’re like “what the fuck?” At the time I was a senior in high school so I took a month off school and two weeks of that I was on tour with my idol and you think, “well this is cool.” I’m 17 and on tour with Julian Casablancas. Just the way he works, you can tell he listens to everything intensely and he’s very specific with each sound. Everything is in his brain. When you see the crowds, you really want that, you want people to love you as much as Julian and The Strokes.
HTF: I’m guessing he’s been your favourite act to support?
Danielle: I think all the acts we’ve supported have been fun and unique. Julian was the first person to really give us a shot. He was kinda like, “Here you go, you’re on tour”. We didn’t really have anything – we didn’t even have any t-shirts. Maybe he’d heard we were okay live but it was literally a case of him going “Do you want to open for me?” That was our first tour and nothing can top that. When we toured with Mumford and Sons it was to like 16,000 people and that’s the biggest crowds we’ve ever played to before. Most of the fans didn’t know who we were before. We’ve met so many interesting people and Mumfords are the most amazing band ever, they’re like our brothers, we talk to them everyday and they’re awesome.
HTF: Did you ever find it hard to win over those audiences?
Este: I don’t think we’ve ever, I mean there’s shows where the first three songs people are like “I dunno what this is”, but by the end of the show I think they get it. But all I think we do is just having fun on stage and just enjoying it.
Danielle: That’s what being in a band is, having fun. But it’s also about persuading people to listen to you. I mean it’ fun to play to people who know your music but it’s also fun to play to people who’ve never heard you before.
HTF: Your parents were in a band growing up, do you feel you would have taken a music career if it wasn’t for your parents?
Danielle: I mean they definitely inspired us and they’re amazing musicians and there were always instruments around us. They were always supportive of us. We were quite energetic kids, so they probably wanted us to get it all out on something. It could be dance class, it could be music class, it could be anything. I think they saw that of all those things music spoke to us the most. I mean I loved being in plays and singing funny songs and dancing around. I mean I dunno, I’ve never really thought about it. We’ll never know, we’ll never know. They certainly inspired us to be amazing musicians and inspired us every step of the way.
HTF: You started off in a covers band, do you find it easier to play your own songs or covers?
Danielle: I mean both are fun, if we didn’t learn those covers we’d not be writing the songs we do now. I mean back in the day, back in the day when I was like 4, internet wasn’t a thing. That’s weird for me to say that in my lifetime internet wasn’t a thing but you’d never be able to go on a website and [find] the chords for the song. You had to record the songs onto cassette, listen to it over and over again to get the chords. We were learning everything by ear when we were kids. Once we got the chords right, and we probably played some pretty shitty chords that were not right, you’d go back and listen to the lyric – we probably fucked that up many times too but that’s how you would learn. From that we learned natural chord progressions that are always phrased, the chords, and the melodies. If we didn’t learn the classic songs we wouldn’t be able to write songs now.
Este: I think learning them, the oldies, means your immersing yourself in classics. I think that was the best lesson in song writing.
HTF: I mean much has been made of the influence of Fleetwood Mac on your sound, especially over here I notice, what other bands would you say have had an influence on your sound?
Este: I think LA radio was pretty much the biggest influence on us.
Danielle: I mean we love loads of things, I mean it’s weird when we see people compare us to Fleetwood Mac as I fucking love Fleetwood Mac. They’re the most amazing songwriters and I can only dream of being anything like that. But listening to our music I don’t pick out Fleetwood Mac right away.
Este: I think people perhaps hear the percussive elements of Fleetwood Mac and the harmonies
Danielle: And we do a cover of a Fleetwood Mac song in our set.
Danielle: We’re influenced by so many other bands, I mean we’re influenced by punk and then there’s stuff like Funkadelic and Prince. Their bass is so funky. Then there’s guitarists and writers like Tom Petty and Lindsey Buckingham. It’s kind of an accumulation of what we’ve listened to over the years.
HTF: You got into RnB in the 90’s, was that to get away from your parents musical interests at the time?
Yeah I guess so, my parents never really got RnB even though they loved Motown. Although I think they liked Mariah Carey and all that stuff. My mum let us listen to it, my Dad only listened to Spanish radio so that was always being put on or the oldies stations my Dad listened to. So a lot of latin influence really and then when you’re in middle school you go to dance parties and at dance parties they always play like TLC and Aaliyah, Mariah Carey and all that shit. I suppose we got into it because these are the places we wanted to go. It wasn’t like our parents wouldn’t let us listen to it because it wasn’t Rock and Roll but they didn’t get it. But we loved it, all pop music really.
Este: 90’s RnB, Backstreet Boys, all that shit. Also the Spice Girls, a real 90’s phase.
HTF: I remember going through a Backstreet Boys phase when I was little…
Este: I was more N-Sync. But then again you weren’t a 14 year old girl.
HTF: Your sounds been described as RnB meets Nu-Folk, would you say that’s a fair statement?
Danielle: Well we’re not really folk, perhaps it’s cause we have long hair, they just went “oh here’s a folkie”.
Este: Plus we harmonise!
HTF: Plus the tour with Mumford and Sons I guess.
Este: I mean we love Folk records, I mean my mums always been huge on that.
Danielle: I mean it’s probably something we grew up with that’s infiltrated our sound, but I don’t think it’s a common sound in our music. We do love RnB – I don’t think we really have any clue what our music sounds like.
HTF: If I was to hazard a ballpark term I’d call it dance-able indie – it’s guitar based indie with RnB sorta percussion.
Danielle: Yeah, I like that one.
HTF: Can we expect any suprises when the album drops?
Danielle: I hope so!
Este: If we told you we’d have to kill you!
Danielle: It’s coming up very soon though, it’s in the process of being recorded right now. It’ll be out early next year.
HTF: Do you feel, without being too cheeky, that there’s a certain pressure on you as a Californian girl group to not just be pretty faces?
Este: Aww, do you think we’re pretty? … I think once people see us live that goes away, I mean we’ll take anyone on, we’re not scared of a challenge.
Danielle: It’s sad that that sort of thing is placed on female musicians as there’s some awesome girl musicians out there.
Este: We’re happy to take it on – I’ve never really thought of myself as this robust model like musician. It’s always been more like I’m a musician, I play music and that’s where I’m happy. But yeah, I happen to be in a band with two babes.
Danielle: We definitely don’t think of ourselves as pretty girls. Have you ever seen us live before? We make really unpleasant faces that aren’t attractive at all. I don’t even notice it but I’ll look at photos of myself after the show and think like what the fuck was I doing onstage. We don’t do the typical model band thing of prettying ourselves up.
HTF: Do you feel it’d be easier to get big if you were guys though?
Este: There’s something really empowering about being a female in the music industry. I think more females need to come out and represent us. I think female bass players are pretty bad ass. You’ve got Mo Tucker, she was a great drummer. Karen Carpenter, Kim Deal. They all were amazing musicians.
