Haim’s Rampant Enthusiasm

Haim’s Rampant Enthusiasm

Coachella 2014 - Haim

Este broke out the Bass Face immediately and never put it away. Alana shimmied to every groove and pounded the everloving shit out of whichever drums were in front of her. Danielle leaned wayyyyy into her combustive Jack White-via-Jimmy Page-via-Robert Johnson pentatonic rumble, as if she was conjuring something so powerful she had to get out of its way. (The dudes on the backline weren’t too shabby either.) Haim has been playing something close to this set for well over a year now, but to the benefit of people like me who hadn’t yet experienced it, their incomparable joy upon unspooling these songs does not seem to have diminished. Whether ripping through a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Oh Well” (just like the used to do it at home in the Valley, we were told) or turning the Shania-worthy ballad “Honey & I” into an epic more akin to “Baba O’Riley” or imploring their audience to get their ass-cheeks clapping during a tremendously raunchy “My Song 5,” their excitement was contagious. And when they closed with “The Wire,” their absolute masterpiece, they delivered Coachella’s first legitimate tingles moment.