Haim gives a refresher course in Haim at the Fonda Theatre
Kevin Bronson on
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Haim have a way of making it feel like the first time.
The quartet — sisters Este, Danielle and Alana Haim, with drummer Dash Hutton — returned to the Fonda Theatre on Tuesday night, gushing about how great it was to be home, taking turns professing their love for Los Angeles and, hair flying, playing a show that blew everybody’s hair back.
Except for a couple of moments, though, the crowd had to feel as if they’d romped down this path from Haim’s Valley Village home turf before. Because they had. Just over three years ago, Haim had a big coming-out party at the Fonda, and the exuberant tenor of Tuesday’s show — not to mention the setlist — was about the same.
“We’ve been in the studio putting the finishing touches on our album,” Danielle Haim explained, repeating the mantra heard often throughout 2016. Originally scheduled for a fall release, the band’s follow-up to their debut “Days Are Gone,” which came out in the fall of ’13, won’t arrive until next year. In July, Haim canceled European tour dates to work further on the new release.
Their fans certainly showed they were ready for it. Alana Haim had the temerity to ask the crowd permission to play a new song — they loudly approved — but only after she mentioned what a “fucking weird week” it’s been and assured them that this is was “no-judgment zone … a safe zone.”
Haim ended up playing two new songs — “Give Me Just a Little of Your Love” and “Nothing’s Wrong,” the same two new songs they had unveiled this spring in a show at the Observatory. The former is a fairly straight-ahead pop stomp with a staccato verse; the latter is a Hutton-propelled monster, Fleetwood Mac on steroids, with a gang chorus and a spoken-word/chanted interlude (Danielle: “It’s obvious / be honest”).
They also busted out the cover of “I Would Die 4 U” that they played in the spring.
The other wrinkle compared to the 2013 show — other than the backdrop being the Red Bull logo (this was part of its “30 Days in LA” series), rather than the band’s logo — was the finale. “Falling,” the lead track on their debut album and originally released as a single in the spring of ’13, was stretched into a raging orgy of percussion as the sisters rotated spots around a custom set-up of snares, toms and cymbals.
Preceding Haim, Canadian singer-songwriter Charlotte Day Wilson prevailed over a chatty crowd, giving the same kind of riveting performance she did in September when she opened for Local Natives at the Greek Theater. Backed by a keyboardist and a drummer and wearing her nifty new piece of merch — a baseball jersey with “CDW” monogrammed on the front and “6/8” on the back (“That’s a time signature,” she said mildly) — she won the crowd over slowly, sealing the deal with a saxophone solo.
She also addressed The State of Things. “I was completely depressed last week, to the point where I wasn’t sure I could perform onstage,” she said before finishing her set with the hymn “Work.”
Miami’s Steven A. Clark opened the night with a set of charismatic if unmemorable tracks-backed R&B.
Haim setlist: If I Could Change Your Mind, Don’t Save Me, I Would Die 4 U, Honey & I, Give Me Just a Little of Your Love, Forever, My Song, Nothing’s Wrong, The Wire, Go Slow, Falling
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