
It’s that opening sound, like the “Edge of Seventeen” riff infested with twenty-first century anxiety. And here we are, back in Haim territory, where the three Cali sisters draw upon the finest pop music inventions from a few decades ago — mostly in the fleetingly brief cultural moment when soft rock didn’t necessarily mean cloying and unbearable — and give it a millennial spit shine, noticeably influenced by indie rock and the earnest, spare cries of musical loneliness cooked up in heavily postered bedrooms across the nation. The song constricts around itself, as if trying to administer a deeply craved hug.
“Cuz now I’m in it/ But I’ve been trying to find my way back for a minute,” Danielle Haim sings, recalling the simple, piercing descriptions of personal misery that characterize peak Rilo Kiley. In Haim’s rendering of the emotion, there’s a welling strength that comes through, a sense that with just a few more deep breaths the tethers holding them back might finally snap. Maybe, just maybe, triumph is in the offing. The “Now” of “Now I’m In It,” the song reminds, is, by definition, only a temporary state.