“Relationships”

What’s that sound? Is it the first song of the summer? Is it “Relationships,” the featherweight, angst-filled new Haim track about a tortured silence in a long-term romance? Is it both, or it could be, maybe, if we just—no, wait, don’t answer that. Produced by Danielle Haim and Rostam, with single cover art inspired (with plausible deniability) by Nicole Kidman’s (plausibly denied) divorce paparazzi shot, the not-at-all-deep “Relationships” still somehow manages to encapsulate the problem with modern relationships: We don’t know how to talk about them at all. A head-clearing drum intro leaves our narrator alone with her thoughts, wondering whether all this heartache is something we should’ve outgrown (“Is it just the shit our parents did?”), or if we’re still too young to understand (“Maybe that’s just how it goes/When you’re not fully grown”), whether great loves “end up all the same” or if she’d “do it all it again” (well, yes). The summery minimal funk continues apace, the logic circling like a song on repeat, the resolution never quite satisfying. “Relationships” is cagey like that—like you could send it to your crush and they couldn’t begin to know what you really meant.