#81

#81. Haim - Falling (#27, 2013)

16th of 2013

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When I was young, I had a bit of trouble with live action TV. It wasn't a hard and fast rule, but I probably needed things to be inherently slapstick as a focus. The Home Alone movies started and ended with the rube goldbergs and seeing Joe Pesci receive cruel and unusual punishment. There was nothing he could do, Kevin was a made man, and he wasn't (isn't it funny that those two movies came out only a couple months apart?). I think there was a part of me that just assumed these things were for adults, otherwise they would make them a cartoon.

If you already clocked where I'm going with this, then I'm sorry that I'm so painfully predictable. If not, enjoy the confusing ride. There's an Australian children's TV show from the '90s & '00s called Round The Twist. It's about a father and his three children who move to a new small town and live in a lighthouse, where supernatural things seem to happen very regularly. I don't think there was ever an accidental poisoning and subsequent shoot out but I never saw the whole thing. I just generally found myself confused by everything going on with it because I was incapable of paying attention to story lines, something I've only gotten marginally better at. Another curious quirk of the show is that it essentially had three different runs, first in 1990, then 1993 and finally in 2000. It means that millennials across the board are likely familiar with it as part of their upbringing, but there's the quirk to it in that most of the characters had to be re-cast each time around. I think they mostly did a good job at finding new cast members, to the point where I'm not even sure which generation I'm most familiar with, just that Season 1 Bronson is unrecognisable to me.

I thought I should do my homework on this so I decided to properly watch the first episode of each iteration, and then I also watched the third episode of season 2 because I wanted to try the Glass Animals method (#901). I do not recommend taking this path because that episode has the boys doing a literal pissing contest. There's also a water spirit that looks suspiciously similar to No Face from Spirited Away, only this came out nearly a decade earlier. Also got some big Final Destination vibes from that episode. I didn't know Paul Jennings was a big creative force on the show, that's interesting. I guess I don't really know what a normal episode is supposed to look like. There's a strong pattern of children being tortured, and I've also witnessed spying on a girl in the bathroom, and the vitally important m-preg episode. I do love how passionate the bully kids are about political canvassing though. I think my favourite part was at the start of the second season where it felt like they were lampshading the conceit, wondering if they'd lived past lives as different people, Pete suggesting his twin sister might have been more attractive (I will not weigh in on this).

What on earth does this have to do with "Falling" by Haim? I mean obviously there are three Haim siblings and they get up to wacky adventures, no one's denying that. More importantly though, there's one thing about Round The Twist that has stuck with me as long as I can remember, and that's the theme song. It's performed by the original actress for Linda and stays for the whole duration, so she's arguably the only consistent part of the show. It's very extra, and it's very memorable. For my benefit, it also succinctly explains the premise of the show which is always nice. The first three words, sung on their own are 'Have you ever'. I'm led to believe that the opening line of "Falling" is 'I give a little', but I have never been able to experience anything other than this strange coincidental match up that my brain feeds to me every time the song starts. I just so badly need Danielle to follow it up with 'Ever felt like this?'. It hasn't yet, but maybe if I watch even more Round The Twist I'll start hearing it everywhere. It has proven to be a fun side adventure to get me to take a short break from watching later seasons of Lost (#142), something that I'm still doing because much like some of those characters, I simultaneously live in the past, present & future. I'm gonna edit this post months in the future, laughing at my former self who has no idea what he's in for in season 6, I imagine.

If this is all too off topic then I apologise but it's hard to muster up a whole lot for what is my third time around on the same Haim album, all with songs I have pretty similar feelings about. Haim are one of those bands that don't necessarily have iconic songs, so Jeopardy! like asking about them but it's more like 'Can you name that band that's three sisters?' and not 'What's that song about not letting your mind retire?' (#111). If you want some statistical fluff to go along with this, then I can report that "Falling" is technically their breakthrough single in this context though I say it with the cruellest of circumstances. By all accounts they should've been celebrating the victory in 2012 except they landed at #106 with "Forever" and #101 with "Don't Save Me". The worst thing about that is that "Don't Save Me" actually entered the ARIA Charts in January 2013, late in the voting period. You get the feeling they just needed a little more time to climb up the rankings. Maybe it served them better in 2013 though. It's one thing to want to make amends for an unfortunate result (one as clearly sign-posted as the #101 position at that), it's another to have it perfectly positioned as the band clearly are on the rise and release their debut album in the next year. For all I know, everyone wildly overcompensated and that's why Haim only ever had one entry outside of 2013 (#787).

If you don't look at that context, "Falling" looks like a massive breakout hit that I don't think it really is. Like "Find an Island" (#88), it's a nice choice to steady the ship, and maybe convince more people that this is an artist to look out for, it's just never felt like the prime Haim song, especially when the next single after it was so much more successful (I'm not linking "The Wire" again, but it's obviously "The Wire"). It gave the song an identity crisis for me that's taken a long time to get past.

"Falling" is a pretty great song that gives me plenty to like in it. Just on the production side of thing, the prominence of the bass makes it feel so different to every other Haim song, and the way they layer it with the percussion creates this lively feeling to it. Counter-acted by the shouted title lyric is one of the most captivating hooks they've ever written to lock the whole thing in place. That's the real gimmick of Haim, the fact they write some of the weirdest melodies and distract you enough with spectacle that you'll never question if it works or not, you've already got it stuck in your head.