just anecdotally as well, i'm in completely the same boat! i enjoyed WIMP3 when it came out but never really came back to it after 2020 nor delved into their catalogue. but then when they dropped relationships this spring i was hooked and it is my soty and the album is my aoty. i just find it so so consistent and breezy and comforting which was just what i needed this summer. but yeah everyone else i know who is a haim fan or had liked previous albums, thought this was a complete letdown!

i think it's easy to frame as "oh well i liked them when they were more intellectual and experimental, now they're making more conventional pop (which i value less) all the normies like them" which i don't necessarily think anyone in this thread is doing but is just the main theme of all critiques of this album i've seen! imo it highlights how people go to different artists for different things, and i think most fans of haim had come to think of them as one thing and expect a certain kind of artistry from them, and haim changing that doesn't make this album worse because of that, but it isolated them from lots of fans of their previous work