Haim goes for 'tough' in new album

George Michael and failed love: How the trio arrived at the raw sound in 'I Quit.'

- MIKAEL WOOD

SISTERS Haim recently stopped at the Forum.

HEIDI STANTON

Danielle Haim remembers coming into the studio with three thoughts in her head:

1. She and her sisters still needed an opener for their new album.

2. They should try sampling somebody else's music.

3. That somebody should be George Michael.

This was last year in Los Angeles, as Danielle, Este and Alana Haim were chipping away at what would become the fourth LP by the rock trio that bears their family’s name. With Danielle and her friend Rostam Batmanglij working as co-producers, the band had made great progress at Rostam's place and at Valentine, a vibey old studio in Valley Village, two blocks from the Haims' childhood home.

Yet Danielle and Rostam agreed that they hadn't yet cracked "a song that felt like Track 1," as Rostam puts it now.

So with inspiration drawn from Beyoncé's densely referential "Cowboy Carter" and with Michael on her mind as always - "I'm just a huge fan," she says Danielle walked in one day, "and I was like, 'All right, hear me out, I have this weird idea," which was to use the funky chorus chant of Michael's classic "Freedom! '90" as the basis for a Haim song called "Gone." Rostam's first reaction? "My first reaction was: That's gonna be expensive," he says.

Michael The George sample a precursor, it turns out, of the sisters' pal Taylor Swift's interpolation of "Father Figure" on "The Life of a Showgirl" - was one of several creative decisions Danielle and Rostam unpacked in a recent conversation about the making of Haim's "I Quit," which came out in June to admiring reviews and which the band is supporting on a tour that recently stopped for a hometown show at Inglewood's Kia Forum. Last week, the band announced that it will release a deluxe edition of the album with three new songs on Friday.