Splendour Visit Is A Dream Come True For Haim

"You have no idea how excited I am about going to Australia,” beams Este Haim, the bass-playing, face-pulling eldest sister in the upwardly-mobile sibling-trio Haim. Riding a wave of exuberant hype, especially in the UK press, the band have been earmarked for big things long before a debut album's materialised, and will soon be arriving in Australia for their first-ever shows in our parts: a pair of dates in Sydney and Melbourne and a slot at Splendour In The Grass. “Oh, I know the schedule, my friend,” boasts Este. “I know it like the back of my hand.”

“It's been a dream of mine since I was a kid to come to Australia,” Este explains. “I used to yell at my mom, when she wouldn't let me do things, I'd go to my room and slam the door and yell: 'I'm moving to Australia!' I don't know where the fuck I got it from; I was, like, apparently three years old. Safe to say I've always wanted to go to Australia. It only took 25 years, but here I am! Look at me now, Ma: living the dream!”

The incredibly-talkative 27-year-old has spent most of that 25 years playing music. The eldest daughter of a drummer father named Mordechai – “I think he comes from Jewish gypsy blood” – Este was first sat behind a drum kit from “the time [she] could hold her head up”, and could hold a beat from the time she was four. Aside from various childhood flirtations with the circus – from learning trapeze tricks and how to ride a unicycle as a ten-year-old at a Club Med vacation in Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo, Mexico to an obsession with the theatrics and costumes of Cirque du Soleil after seeing them play in Las Vegas as a 13-year-old – it's been music that's been at the core of Este's life. To the point where the moment she first picked up a bass has the feeling of a formative childhood experience.

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