HAIM has given Paul Thomas Anderson an unlikely second career
Image: Graphic: Natalie Peeples Music Features For Our Consideration
Music videos have never been more accessible than they are right now. They’ve also arguably never been less relevant, at least not since their earliest days. In the ’80s, videos offered a new way for listeners to experience their favorite artists. In the ’90s, a clever video could propel an alternative rock band or hip-hop act onto sales charts (or at least get them an unwitting guest spot on Beavis & Butt-Head). Even as recently as the mid-2000s, bands like OK Go were parlaying viral videos into bigger followings than they might have otherwise managed.
But while some big-name artists dutifully continue to clock in buzzy clips—or even release “visual albums”—the sheer scale of streaming video has diminished the role of music videos in many non-superstar careers. Plenty of artists put all or most of their new releases on YouTube as an audio-only feed, to capture streams that now feed into Billboard charts; some drop a new single with a simple lyric video to provide a cursory accompaniment; others go back and assemble a genuine music video later, if the song proves popular enough. Music-related clips can now get traction via TikTok, but the quick-hit (and often crowdsourced) nature of that platform—plus the outbreak of a global pandemic—have resulted in videos that feel increasingly off-the-cuff and homemade. Even if they blow up, like “Old Town Road,” the artist’s original images may be just a jumping-off point, if that, to inspire remixes and memes. No wonder music videos have been rebranded as “visuals,” an adjective-to-noun conversion honoring the fact that plenty of them are just placeholders because you gotta put something on that YouTube screen.
It’s noteworthy, then, that the rock band HAIM (also the surname of founding sisters Danielle, Este, and Alana) has made music videos so central to its image-making, particularly during the promotional cycles for the group’s two most recent albums, 2017’s Something To Tell You and 2020’s Women In Music Pt. III. The upping of HAIM’s video game has coincided with their decision to employ moonlighting filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson as sort of an in-house videographer; the methodical auteur behind There Will Be Blood and Boogie Nights directed or co-directed six of their last nine videos, with Paper Towns director Jake Schreier helming the other three.
The earliest pre-PTA HAIM videos are recognizable cousins of their later work; there’s some coordinated (and sometimes charmingly non-coordinated) dancing in “Forever” and “If I Could Change Your Mind.” But the videos accompanying singles from the band’s debut album also tend to feature mish-mashes of familiar concepts: home video footage; performances in locations that are supposed to be unlikely, assuming you haven’t seen other music videos; cutaways to slow-motion shots of “regular” people who aren’t in the band. “The Wire” is pure shtick, with the Haim sisters successively breaking the hearts of three devastated boyfriends. It would have fit right in on a later-period episode of 120 Minutes.
By comparison, their subsequent videos with Anderson seem conceptually negligible—at first. Their initial collaboration was “Valentine,” a live, behind-the-scenes short film, the first few minutes of which were shortened into a video for a live version of “Right Now.” The full film and the shorter video both consist of Anderson filming the Haim sisters live in the studio without much visible adornment. “Right Now” is captured mostly in a continuous take as they perform the song and switch instruments as needed. There are more cuts in the video for “Little Of Your Love,” but the basic idea, or lack thereof, is similar: Anderson’s camera catches them each singing and dance-walking in turn as they strut and shimmy around a nondescript club full of other dancers, the three occasionally lining up for something more coordinated. Contrasted with the occasional organized dancing, the lip syncing is casual: In closer shots, the singers mouth along with the words, then drop the conceit as needed.
In later videos, Anderson and the band head back outdoors, favoring lateral camera moves that follow the Haims as they make their way through bustling Los Angeles-area streets. In “Summer Girl” their walk starts with layered, winter-ready clothing, which they gradually shed as the video continues. As with the lip syncing, strict continuity is ignored; additional layers reappear in cuts, prolonging the undressing process. “Now I’m In It” pushes further away from reality, as Danielle moves through a waitress job, looking vaguely zombified, before she collapses onto a stretcher and her sisters bring her to a car wash for an unusual cleansing. Across the videos, the setups aren’t identical. At the same time, given the recognizable gait of Danielle’s walk, the fact that two different clips feature a Haim sister singing from inside a glass ticket booth, and the general Los Angeles magic-hour vibes, assembling tropes for a Haim spoof video would be nearly as easy as it is to make a hacky compendium of Wes Anderson or Quentin Tarantino touchstones.
These tropes do belong chiefly to Haim. While he’s become a close collaborator with the band, attributing too much of this creative vision to Anderson would probably be a mistake. “I Want You Back,” which tracks HAIM down an empty Los Angeles street as the band does some tiny-moves dance-walking, is arguably their ur-video, distilling their casual-cool appeal while fitting comfortably into the aesthetics of their more recent clips—and that was one of Schreier’s, not Anderson’s. These visuals are unavoidably on-brand for a group that splits the difference between girl-group uniformity and “authentic” California individuality, shot through a filter of self-aware yet still Instagram-friendly stylishness.
What makes HAIM’s artistry compelling beyond its hooks, charisma, and clever synthesis of disparate sources (Women In Music has songs that sound, at various points, like Sheryl Crow, Lou Reed, Fleetwood Mac, and Savage Garden) is the band’s ability to conjure the emotions that elevate their Insta-friendly vibes, and resonate more deeply than 60 seconds of TikTok. Anderson knows how to indulge the surface pleasures of imagery, calling attention to their contrivances while still excavating the human feeling underneath it all, something he does especially well in his earlier films. Boogie Nights depicts a kind of parallel Hollywood in the ’70s porn industry that’s at once glamorous, scuzzy, and sad; Magnolia looks for cracks in those more mainstream entertainment-industry institutions, going behind the scenes of an old-timey game show and a misogynist magnet of a self-help seminar. Both movies are also directed with enormous showmanship that heightens their movie-ness without sacrificing their sensitivity.
Anderson’s HAIM videos don’t ratchet up to Magnolia levels of operatic intensity. Viewed in quick succession, though, it’s easy enough to identify a loose but effective visual continuity between them, just as Boogie Nights and Magnolia pair well despite a lack of shared-universe overlap. “Little Of Your Love” opens on a shot of Danielle walking down the street that could be taking place moments after the end of “I Want You Back.” The short sequence that opens “Now I’m In It,” where Danielle drinks at a bar before making a hasty exit, looks like a more distressed companion to a similar moment in “Summer Girl,” and the serene-looking dressing and undressing of that video gives way to a smeary parody of morning primping in “The Steps” (which was co-directed by Anderson and Danielle). If the endless layers of cool outfits in “Summer Girl” make the band members’ stylishness look Instagram-level aspirational, “The Steps” is more akin to one of Anderson’s glimpses behind the showbiz curtain, with its rock stars dribbling toothpaste down their faces, staring into bathroom mirrors, and tumbling into swimming pools. Like Boogie Nights, it’s glamorous, funny, and discomfiting all at once. It features signatures of their work while putting across a sense of defiance that’s not present in their other videos.
Strung together, the videos have enough visual compatibility and recurring images to feel like one long walk—and the Haim sisters are obviously really damn good at the cinematic art of looking cool while walking. (Just as obviously, bands looking cool in music videos is not a groundbreaking achievement.) Yet their work with Anderson also creates connective tissue across a variety of moods and tempos without overdosing on pure anguish. Quite the contrary: “Little Of Your Love” is a shot of sheer exuberance, and there’s still a degree of music-video whimsy in the clips for both “The Steps” and “Now I’m In It.” But Anderson’s close-ups of Danielle’s face capture a genuine sense of loneliness, even if they’d also make great profile pictures. Yet he continues to take breaks from visual splendor, returning to unadorned presentations of the band like he had in their first film together. The recent video for “Hallelujah” offers a variation on “Right Now,” capturing the Haims in a performance space, this time augmented with otherworldly touches like floating chairs and Haim-controlled lighting rigs in place of recording-studio trappings.
The push-pull between rock-star cool and more plaintive performance perfectly suits HAIM’s music: Just as some of the songs of Women In Music Pt. III adorn lyrics about depression and heartbreak with immediate melodic hooks, the videos are both aesthetically pleasing and evocative. They wink at the artifice of music video construction and indulge the recurring motifs of the band’s style while still expressing moods too complicated for a hashtag.
Although the Haim sisters have recalled their initial shock that Anderson reached out to them, the creative relationship doesn’t feel one-sided. As Anderson has moved from Boogie Nights and Magnolia to more obtuse (and no less excellent) period pieces like The Master and Phantom Thread, his music video work has allowed him to stay in touch with the youthful energy of his earlier films without a pandering “return to form” that casts aside the progress he’s made as a filmmaker. At times, it feels as if Anderson’s music videos are slowly assembling a musical that might not otherwise see the light of day—that the band’s talent may be drawing the filmmaker out of his own head. It may yet have a discernible effect on his day job; it’s been reported that Alana Haim will appear in Anderson’s next narrative film.
Unlike the implied mandate of a visual album that presumably must be seen in order to be fully understood, the collaboration between HAIM and PTA stays more or less in the realm of traditional music video. As with so many acts now stuck close to home, the band’s most recent, mid-pandemic clips have necessarily taken them back to basics: Coordinated dances and more cool walking are reasonably easy to shoot under the current circumstances. As enjoyable as the videos for “I Know Alone” and “Don’t Wanna” are, they’re not a strong case for greater immediacy or smaller productions benefiting HAIM’s audio-visual presentation. The band and filmmaker have made a now old-fashioned format their own, and fans may find that the images from the PTA videos stay lodged in their head longer than clips from other bands. It’s easy to call them iconic, and even easier to picture the group quietly brushing off the designation, or even actively rolling their eyes at it. That’s more or less what they’re already doing with the messiness of “The Steps” or the gentle ennui of “Now I’m In It.” With Anderson, a group of crazy-talented musicians have found a director who understands the weird, beautiful fragility of icons—and iconography.
70 Comments
TAKE THAT, OKGO!
Yeah! Your music videos are better than your music!
Coming at you like a truth blizzard.
Dunking on OKGo in 2020 like what!
Yeah!
WOO!
Give me another one while I’m good and pumped.
I’ll tell you a thing or two about Lost, if you like?
(Edit: Also PTA is great and he does good things)
I like Boogie Nights so much that he gets a lifetime pass, but honestly I didn’t care for Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love, or Inherent Vice. Phantom Thread looks like it’s probably pretty good, so I’ll get around to seeing it sometime.
He makes great Resident Evil movies.
That joke never ages…unlike my terrible, decrepit body.
To each his own; I found those films challenging and surprising in a good way, recognizing he works with fresh and diverse material. My deep appreciation of Anderson has to do with being one of a select group of directors who could be his own D.P…. Bong Joon Ho is one, as well as Fincher, Scott, Villeneuve, Soderbergh, among a handful of others. There are very few who have the ability to work both sides of the camera, or understand how to set up and evoke a feeling with laser-focused visual control.
He’s a tremendous director and an excellent screenwriter. His movies are amazingly visualized and conceived, and his dialog is stylized in a subtle way that emphasizes characterization and gives the actors a lot to do. He assembles impeccable casts, and he exercises a mastery of tone that allows for sudden tonal shifts that aren’t jarring. I really admire his movies. It’s just that I’ve only enjoyed two of them.
He is honestly talented, nice summation. I understand, I feel the same way about Charlie Kaufman. I go to his films knowing they are not going to be easy to watch, will be challenging visually and psychologically. I admire him and I appreciate his commitment to keeping my brain fully engaged from beginning to end with an exhausting cinematic circus act. I never walk out of one of his thinking “Wow, that was so enjoyable!!” Rather, “Well, time to go home, shower, relax and let my mind rest up a bit” Whereas, Wes Anderson? Full enjoyment. Eat his stuff up like a spoon, have been a fan for decades and have been waiting anxiously for The French Dispatch despite all delays. I can say the same thing for the Coen brothers, love even their less popular films because they are not repetitive, simplistic or focused only on pandering to the masses.
Ironically, I’m kind of a big OK Go fan, relatively speaking. I’ve seen them in concert like a dozen times. Granted, this was mostly a combo of them opening for They Might Be Giants and my wife becoming a huge fan after watching them open for They Might Be Giants… but still. Have all of their albums. Have a t-shirt or two somewhere. I’ve always found that their “they make great videos for mediocre music” rep was kind of undeserved. That first record especially is very good.
Love you, Jesse.
Your lovely blend of sincerity and snark is genuinely the reason I keep coming back to this place despite the fact it’s now full of hideous Taboola ads, fucks up my browser window and takes me twice as long to navigate anywhere.
Questionable decor but great food, in other words! 😉 Thank you, sincerely. That’s lovely to hear. And I would honestly still be addicted to AVC even without a sometime byline here for the film section alone! Honestly not sure if there’s a better bench of movie critics on the whole dang internet.
https://www.avforums.com/writer/tom-davies.840365/I don’t know, this guy’s pretty great.
*COUGH COUGH*
Seems like solid stuff; he (COUGH) just needs to be surrounded with the likes of Ignatiy, Roxana, etc., to get some of that sweet afterglow! 😉
OKGo’s first record is very good, but they didn’t start making the elaborate videos until the second and (especially) the third. They’ve been spending way more time on the video concepts than the actual music for at least a decade.
I mean, I doubt that’s literally true, and anyway, as you allude, the second album (which I like, but definitely not as much as the first) was completed in full before the treadmill video was completed, so it’s not as if they were rushing through music to get to a video that they presumably hadn’t thought about yet (I believe they even did an earlier video for that song before the treadmill thing). But I do think you can kinda yoke their video work to another aspect of their music that’s limited their growth: I do sometimes feel as if they’re chasing, if not trends exactly, different styles, in search of something that really hits in a big way.On the first record, it feels eclectic and adventurous; on some of the others, it can feel a little like they’re dumbing down or smoothing out some of their weirder ideas in pursuit of something else. (“Here It Goes Again” as a song is a great example; I don’t think they actually made a chintzy song because they were thinking about the video. But it certainly isn’t one of their best.)But I think if they were really half-assing their records in favor of videos, the albums would come out a lot faster than every 5-6 years. It’s just a bummer that they now feel like more of a mixed-bag singles band than a great album band.
They’re also increasingly waiting around for funding to make crazy high-concept videos. The last three singles from their most recent album came out between 2 and 3 years after the album release and were financed by a Russian airline, Morton Salt, and a paper company.I completely agree with what you say about their musical direction, but I’d still say that the last 5 years in particular, they feel more like a boutique advertising agency than a functional rock band.
Ha, ouch, but not inaccurate. I would also quibble with the “waiting around” characterization, because I doubt any of them have enough money to literally just put everything on hold until they can make a new video. I wonder if they’re also creatively restless enough to toy around with other stuff (really no idea what Damian, say, does in all this downtime, but it must be something) when they don’t feel inspired to work on music and videos. Understandable, given what mid-level-or-lower artists make from music sales nowadays. But, yeah, a little bit of a bummer considering the promise of that first record (and the many good songs they’ve done since).
I mean, that’s saying a lot. Their music videos are great.
There it went again
is he making some kind of hand signal? because every time i look at that photo all i see is that un-natural finger/hand pose. just curious…
It’s a white power thing
i knew it!!! 😀
I assumend he was probably holding a small vial… a white powder thing, if you will.
Where’a David Vincent when you need him?
are you saying he’s an alien? i knew it!!! :D(i had to look up who david vincent was… 😉 )
Boy howdy, I’ve tried getting into HAIM, but I just find it so boring. I’ll stick to Corey. Off to watch a double feature of License To Drive and Dream A Little Dream.
Sans the Corey part, I was just thinking yup HAIM is still boring to me. PTA or not I just feel meh about them.
their new album has more lyrics, it’s not just one phrase repeated 40 times on each track, so that’s progressLike…I don’t listen to trance music so I don’t listen to basically lyric trance music.
You can top it off with some words that rhyme with Corey: Glory… story… allegory…
Great article, though. I meant no disrespect. Very well thought out and lengthier (in a good way!) than I thought it would be.
I mean disrespect. They suck.
… montessori…
Whatever happened my friend, Corey Haim Haim Haim Haim
I love Haim
That’s great! Truly. I would never say that someone shouldn’t listen to them. My brother loves them, as well. I’ve been told that I’m far too picky with music.
Yeah, I tried listening to them a couple years ago and thought they were okay but not great.
“The Wire” is pure shtick, with the Haim sisters successively breaking the hearts of three devastated boyfriends. It would have fit right in on a later-period episode of 120 Minutes.”I actually really love the shtick, that’s my favorite HAIM song because of it. HAIM is just great in general, so anything they do, I’m a fan, no matter who’s making the videos.
It’s also my favorite song! But there’s often something that kinda bums me out when I see contemporary bands doing middling music-video shtick. I love so much stuff that reminds me my teenage years in the ’90s, but for some reason that doesn’t do it for me in music videos.
I totally get that, and I agree that sometimes, bands can lay it on too heavy with the shtick, but I think I’m personally more inclined to it, so I don’t mind it all that that much.
too long did not read. crap music and crap music videos.
delete my fucking account you pieces of shit. this is trash.
cant delete my account? FUCK YOU
this is such a toxic heap of gross shitty life. fuck all of you delete my account
Too bad there’s no Prince around to write songs for them.
delete this NOW. you fucking suck.
Anderson’s also been collaborating with Radiohead and Thom Yorke for Daydreamers and Anima, respectively, as well as doing an album documentary for Jonny Greenwood. All of it’s really good work which, similarly to the HAIM videos, has his fingerprints but keeps the artist front and center.
And yet, this is the best video HAIM have ever been in:
I much prefer his Radiohead videos. Partly because the music is so much better. No offense to Haim, I’ve tried, but I just don’t hear anything special or captivating in their music.
Hope he’s nicer to them than he was to Fiona.
Wouldn’t be too hard to clear that bar, from the sound of it.
Paid by the word much?
Not much at all, unfortunately. Would LOVE to be paid by the word. I’d be rich! Rich, I tell you!However, if you find my stuff too verbose, I believe there’s at least one wordless Emmys photo slideshow on the site this week. Perhaps you’d like to bounce it.
I mean, it’s better than “SLOW NEWS DAY I GUESS” as a comment, I guess, but not by much.
Come on, dude, it was a little long.I didn’t really care about the length, though, to be honest. But I DID care that you gave Hallelujah the short shrift. That song and video are AMAZING. Makes me wish I was a woman, so I could be somebody’s sister. I found the whole endeavor extremely moving, and I feel like you scooted right over it.
Oh, so it was a little long but I should have gone into more detail??? Feedback I can use. 😉
But honestly, yeah, that’s why I didn’t get that deep into that one. Trying to keep it under a certain length. And it’s sort of an outlier in terms of the video’s style, which is cool but means it requires a bit more verbiage to talk about in detail. ON TOP OF WHICH, I think a lot of its power derives from the song itself, which wasn’t my focus here. But I agree! It’s a great song.
This article doesn’t mention that Haim’s mom was PT Anderson’s art teacher when he was a kid. Which is the most interesting connection.
I’ve wondered how good a living PTA makes, since he takes time to craft his movies, and they’re not exactly box office hits. Guess moonlighting as a video director (and his wife’s regular and probably higher income) help. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they live more modestly than other celebrities.
I do wonder how the pay works especially in modern music videos where *probably* the label is helping to foot the bill, but knows (I assume almost anything major-label involves the label spending lavishly and then sending the artist the bill, but maybe that’s outdated). That’s funny–I didn’t think about how Maya Rudolph probably brings it more income than PTA, but it’s almost certainly true. I’m sure he wouldn’t exactly be hurting on his own (even with gaps between projects, yeah, a couple of Radiohead gigs and decent payouts for even non-hit movies probably keeps him solvent), but she’s got tons of voiceover gigs, the occasional Happy Madison movie, and Bridesmaids residuals, and that’s probably just in a normal-to-light year for her.
Didn’t Anderson say in an interview a while back that he’s gotta do a movie every couple years or so to keep himself afloat, and the music videos sustain him in between? I forget which one that was with, but it tracks.
I feel like Haim gets right to the cusp of following through on a melodic hook but they never quite get there.
How so? So many of their songs are earworms.
Yeah, their failure to nail a catchy melody comes as surprising news to my brain, which has “The Steps” on loop like all day.
Haim are strong powerful intelligent talented women. Do they look a little like opossums to you? Is it just me? Since I saw it I just can’t unsee it.
wow
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Are HAIM really a thing outside of the AV Club? Nobody I know that’s into either Basic People music or Hipster music has ever mentioned them or posted about them. I tried listening to them a few years ago and found them merely okay.
Record sales data are hard to come by; I can only find Wikipedia saying that the band’s second record did 26,000 copies in this country, which is… not a lot. (Though probably safe to say this is equivalent to doing closer to 50,000 copies back when people actually bought albums in some numbers. Also probably safe to say the first record sold more.) They seem to have done well in England, where the first album was platinum and the second went gold. (Anecdotally, they seem to get plenty of attention from NME, where I also moonlight writing movie stuff.)
I guess you could make a case that they’re sort of the poppy rock-band equivalent to Carly Rae Jepsen, where their most fervent fans and positive press coverage outstrips their actual overall popularity. That said, like Carly Rae Jepsen, they play big concert venues when they come to NYC; I last saw them at Radio City Music Hall. Don’t know if it was sold out, but I think they did two nights. And, at minimum, they get press attention beyond the A.V. Club. So yeah, I do think it’s pretty analogous to CRJ: They’re popular enough to make a living, and the people who are into them are REALLY into them, and they can make money touring… but given their pretty poppy approach and major-label standing, they probably don’t make as much off sales as they “should.” But, you know, hardly anyone under 50 does, anymore.
Those on the hipster side should know them as they are definitely loved in the indie music press (and beyond) and certainly not just on the AV Club. They’ve been on SNL, are huge in the UK, and do okay in the USA for a rock band in a time when rock bands are a hard sell for many (had an album in the top ten of the Billboard charts).
Personally, I like certain songs a lot (Love “The Wire” from their first album and more recently “Los Angeles”, “I’ve Been Down”, “Now I’m in It”, and especially “Summer Girl”) even if I can’t get as into them as much as many.
I do like that they seem to be expanding their sound into more of an electronic pop kind of thing (rather than the kind of 1970s Laurel Canyon vibe they had originally.) Hope they keep going in that direction.
Huh— I assumed they were very popular. They were on SNL; they did a video for Funny or Die; they’ve been referenced on prime-time network TV (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend); and their songs get played on radio stations in stores as mundane as Pret a Manger and CVS. In fact, I’ve long thought of them as one of the few thoroughly mainstream contemporary acts I enjoy.
oh I know what they should name their next album:HAIMATOLOGYyou’re welcome
The video is more nipple-y than I expected.