HAIM I quit (Columbia) — When an act has already spent their whole recording career as impeccably polished and assured as Haim, it’s worth perking up when they assert that a new album has gotten them the closest they’ve ever come to their desired sound. That’s what Danielle Haim said about I quit, the fourth outing with her sisters Alana and Este in the group that bears their last name. As one of the album’s primary producers, alongside longtime collaborator Rostam Batmanglij (with co-producing assistance by Buddy Ross), Danielle is an authoritative voice in making this assessment. On the evidence of what’s heard in the album’s fifteen tracks, Haim had evidently wanting to get a little rougher and a little funkier. Ragged-shuffle opener “Gone” liberally uses a George Michael sample to juice up seventies rock as heard through an Exile in Guyville filter. “Relationships” is a burst of buzzy neo-soul, and “Now It’s Time” comes on with the real-rawk swagger of later INXS. Where earlier Haim releases excelled in the smooth cohesion found on the most beloved Fleetwood Mac classics, I quit can come across as the band’s venture into the roiling contradictions and contrasts of Tusk. “Lucky Stars” puts lilting vocals up against a thick musical churn, and “Take Me Back” is loopily cheerful and agitated at once, like the Lemonheads consorting with the Jim Carroll Band. Even small disruptions in the sonic palette start to feel like chasms opening up, whether the way “Down to Be Wrong” starts languorously before build in defiant energy (“I bet you wish it could be easy/ To change my mind”), and the slight twang of “Cry” is closer to the chameleon-flickers of Kacey Musgraves than any of the more tamed country practitioners favored by Nashville. On I quit, Haim is clearly just getting started. In addition to the tracks already mentioned, check the following: “All Over Me,” “Million Years,” “Spinning,” and “Blood on the Street.”

HOTLINE TNT Raspberry Moon (Third Man) — Will Anderson has made some fine music working more or less on his own as Hotline TNT. Even the most solitary men sometimes crave collaboration, though. For Raspberry Moon, Hotline TNT is a proper band; Anderson is joined by guitarist Lucky Hunter, bassist Haylen Trammel, and drummer Mike Ralston. In addition to full participation in the recording process (presided over by Amos Pitsch, from the Appleton, Wisconsin band Tenement), all four pitched in on the songwriting, and the resulting album is so stuffed full of great ideas that the sounds just pile into each other. Opening track “Was I Wrong?” starts a little abruptly, like album and the listener aren’t quite catching up with the band. The cut’s feel is reminiscent of a slightly dronier Teenage Fanclub circa the great 1991 release Bandwagonesque, and its coiled shoegaze and power pop carries through the whole album. “Julia’s War” is thick and catchy, boasting big, yearning vocals reminiscent of Eleventh Dream Day, Buffalo Tom, and any number of other pre-grunge bands that made noisy college rock. Anderson has fessed up to enjoying a new romantic relationship while working on the album, and his fluttery feelings definitely inform what’s shows up on Raspberry Moon. a sunny quality to the music of” There’s “If Time Flies” sort of a sunny quality to the music, and “Dance the Night Away” is downright beguiled (“I wanna say/ A hundred times a day/ I love your face”). Those smitten feelings are catching. It’s certainly easy to feel them for the whole danged album. Call up the following cuts: “The Scene,” “Break Right,” “Candle,” and Where U Been?”