At their recent live shows, HAIM have been broadcasting statements that not only promote the titular message of their new album – I quit – but recontextualize older songs from their discography. “I quit giving up,” read the sister trio’s sign as they launched into their Women In Music Pt. III highlight ‘Don’t Wanna’ at Primavera. It’s often not hard to connect their songs, even if they were written a decade apart. You’d have no issue fitting ‘The Wire’, one of the best breakup songs they’ve written, into the new album, which is chock-full of them. (If you know one thing about this record, it’s that it was informed by the breakup between Danielle Haim and the band’s longtime producer Ariel Rechtshaid.) With longtime collaborator and former Vampire Weekend member Rostam Batmanglij now co-producing, I quit presents a version of the band that is pointed, assured, and melodically brilliant – especially on the singles – but also anxious, scattered, and teetering on (or taking refuge in) stylistic obscurity. They say it’s the sound of the band they always wanted to become, which is another way of saying, as Danielle sings on the opening track, “You never saw me for what I was.” Which is not to discredit their first three good-to-great albums – just an opportunity to see it all through a new lens.

1. Gone

The effectiveness of sampling George Michael’s ‘Freedom 90’ on I quit’s opening track may be up for debate, but I think “muddling” is the more appropriate verb, which is why it works – there is frustration and exhaustion embedded in the freedom, which isn’t newfound so much as newly fermenting. The guitar solo is almost discordant, but it helps spew out some of that negative energy. “Can I have your attention, please?/ For the last time before I leave,” Danielle Haim sings, suggesting she’s been there many times over. So she may reference ‘Born to Run’, but she’s careful to slow and strip things down. Show us how it really feels.

2. All over me

HAIM could have gone in a much glossier direction with ‘All Over Me’, but Rostam’s fuzzy production, accentuated by Dave Fridmann’s fried-up mixing, deconstruct its sunny, nostalgic country-pop melodies in an interesting way. “You want us locked in,” she sings, but clearly something’s off.

3. Relationships

When you’ve got a summer jam in your hands, you don’t mess with it too much, so HAIM keep ‘Relationships’ smooth and bouncy as they boil the album’s thesis down to, “Fucking relationships, am I right?” There’s something absurd and unifying in taking pleasure in that conclusion, which is what the song does over a pristinely sleek R&B beat. It absolutely makes sense as I quit’s lead single, and in the context of the album, it oddly picks things up: the line “You really fucked with my confidence” may be validated by other songs on the album, but this one’s too much of a delight not to sound confident. It may sound conversational, but there’s no “he said, she said.” Just an acknowledgement that we’ve all – even that you – been there, and can bob our heads along.

4. Down to be wrong

“It was all a dream, huh.” In the second verse of ‘Down to Be Wrong’, another promising advance single, HAIM capture the particular feeling of being on a flight, fresh off the end of a relationship, and getting hit by the surreal realization that it was all illusory. Danielle Haim holds it down on the drums, then absolutely goes off, her instrument so emotive it almost matches the soaring vocals on the chorus. It doesn’t all sound so easy anymore – way more than “an innocent mistake [that] turns into seventeen days.” Sometimes the dream lasts much longer, and this is the point of rupture. The language is more potent, too: instead of saying it’s soul-crushing, she sings: “I crushed my whole heart/ Tryin’ to fit my soul into your arms.”  You can’t fake that.

5. Take me back

With a mix of glockenspiel, harmonica, sax – not to mention that title – it’s easy to view ‘Take Me Back’ as HAIM indulging in a healthy bit of indie rock nostalgia. But its propulsiveness is also a reminder of the relentless pace at which the group is wont to run, keeping any sense of real permanence out of reach. “Trying to waste the day away/ I never get to do that now,” it goes – so what’s wrong with conjuring the memory when it still feels so fresh?

6. Love you right

Rostam’s sitar and vocal processing adds some colour to an otherwise muted moment in the tracklist, one that seems to put more stock in the melodic structure than its raw vulnerability. It sits in an uneasy space, leaving you eager for the next move.

7. The farm

‘The farm’ follows to deliver what’s lacking, or reserved, on the previous song. HAIM are taking a bit of a gamble by placing two break-up country ballads in the middle of the album, but Danielle’s impassioned vocals earn the spotlight on this one, enunciating each word and stretching out the feeling. When she sings, “The distance keeps widenin’/ Between what I let myself say and what I feel,” you can feel the gap, between what she sings and what she feels, closing. If you’re the least bit invested, it’s a stirring performance.

8. Lucky stars

If the dissolution of a relationship can be stark and resolutely unpoetic, HAIM are smart to contrast it with the haze of enduring love on this shoegaze number, which is also the point where I quit starts becoming more experimental with its form. It serves them here, strange as it may sound to hear them echoing out lines like “The constellation of our lives/Shifting every night” a la Beach House. (Gotta thank them.)

9. Million years

The group stays in hazy, infatuated territory, though it feels muddier and less sure-footed on this song, despite the skittering breakbeat that drives it along. It’s hard to pay attention to the lyrics after the early lines “I’d stop every war/Even if it takes a million years” – or maybe you just ache to hear them loud and clear again.

10. Everybody’s trying to figure me out

The anxiety creeping through the previous song takes real form on ‘Everybody’s trying to figure me out’, which started taking shape after a panic attack Danielle had after getting back from tour. Co-written with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, the song avoids complicating the experience, coming to a close by repeating a popular grounding mantra: “You think you’re gonna die, but you’re not gonna die.” It could have landed a little flat were it not for Rostam’s subtle production flourishes, including filling out the space between “I got” and “mine” or simply beefing up the guitar. It’s not simple, they seem to say, but we can make it sound a little more straightforward.

11. Try to feel my pain

“I’ll try to hide my pain/ But I don’t know which way,” Danielle sings, and the song ends up (however purposefully) watering it down. It’s a neat soul experiment, but it’s the one outlier – given how brief it is – that could have been a bonus cut.

12. Spinning

HAIM prove themselves capable of delivering a synth workout that puts you in a daze rather than simply sounding, like, say, the 1975. With their reticence back (“There are some things I keep to myself”), this is the song that risks sounding the most anonymous, but the dizziness pays off.

13. Cry

Another emotional 180, this time with Este earnestly taking the lead: “I’m past the anger, past the rage/ But the hurt ain’t gone,” she sings. Compared to a song like ‘The Farm’, the outpouring is smooth and amiable, but not unaffecting.

14. Blood on the street

Remember that line, “I’d stop every war/Even if it takes a million years”? Now hear this: “I swear you wouldn’t care/ If I was covered in blood, lying dead on the street/ And I can count on my one hand/ All the times that you really made me feel free.” As a ballad, ‘Blood on the street’ may have been a touch too revealing for a single, but as the penultimate track on I quit, its rawness (and ruthlessness) – especially as the sisters trade lead vocals – is vivifying. When they want to, they really aren’t pulling any punches.

15. Now it’s time

If the George Michael sample on the opener was curiously understated, ‘Now it’s time’ plays up the utter absurdity of them interpolating U2’s ‘Numb’. HAIM have already made a point of their eclecticism with various stylistic detours; this is just a bold yet baffling choice. And perhaps it’s a good one for this group – known for ushering in a particularly tasteful brand of indie rock and, here, often reprimanding themselves for being a little to discreet. You can go out with a bang, or you can go out with a question, in this case: “Am I reaching out to say/ I never gave two fucks anyway?” That bit of carelessness suits HAIM, who sound liberated taking the long, messy way home; not changing the game, necessarily, just how they’re playing their hand.