I’m just back from the gym and
feeling good about myself (a workout will do that) and feeling positive about
life in general. I warn you, however, that this positivity will not find its
way into the following album review.
Disc 645 is….Knives Don’t Have Your Back
Artist: Emily
Haines & the Soft Skeleton
Year of Release: 2006
What’s up with the Cover? Not much. Black
print on a copper background. I kind of like the simplicity of it.
How I Came To Know It: I was trying to find something
musically interesting to buy Sheila for either a Christmas or birthday present.
This album had just come out, and I knew that Sheila really liked Metric, so I
took a chance it would be good.
How It Stacks Up: I only have this one solo album by Emily Haines, but
I prefer her work in Metric.
Rating: 2 stars
For those who don’t know, Emily
Haines is the lead singer and best known person in the Canadian band Metric. I
don’t know who the Soft Skeleton is but according to the liner notes they are a
few of Haines’ favourite musicians. They needed a firmer backbone to stand up
to some of the poor decisions made on this record.
As a general rule if I like a group,
I’ll give individual band members a chance on their solo work. While there is
no exact formula, I find that vocalists out on their own tend to focus on
sparse arrangements and lyrics. Since I like both, it is usually a good bet,
and maybe because of that expectation I found “Knives Don’t Have Your Back”
underwhelming.
Haines has a pretty voice, which
can feel conspiratorial and waifish in just the right way – like she’s
whispering her secrets to you in a dark room. It is used to good effect in her
band Metric, but on “Knives…” it feels like she is missing the counterbalance the
band provides to weight to her songs.
In Haines’ defence, it is clear
from the outset that a quiet, muted record is what she was going for. There is
nothing wrong with that, but the songs on “Knives…” don’t hold up under this
treatment. They are meant to be atmospheric, but for the most part I found they
felt more like they weren’t going anywhere. It is like Enya’s early work, but missing
the gentle roll of the Celtic rhythm and the vocal power.
The worst part is the piano, which
dominates the album (many songs are almost exclusively piano). It is played in
a thudding style. I read on Wikipedia (which is never wrong) that Haines was
trying to recreate the experience she had as a girl of quietly playing on her
family piano. Unfortunately she’s done too
good a job of it. The piano just needs to do more to hold your attention. She pushes
the sound at the expense of the songs, and where these tracks could be haunting
they instead tend to come off as plodding and lacking direction.
I’ve never been a big fan of Metric’s
lyrics, but on her own Haines does a slightly better job and some of these
songs have strong messages that are delivered subtly. While they don’t build tight
storylines, that isn’t how these songs work, and the snippets of images stitch
together to make interesting mood pieces. Lines like “There are so many skirts under the table/None of these long legs are
mine” (from “Detective Daughter”)
are both sexy and openly awkward, not unlike Haines herself. In other places Haines
goes to great pains to remind us she is not a sex symbol (even though in the
indie world she is – beauty can be a burden as much as homeliness).
One side note on the packaging: there
is an excessive and pretentious review on the back cover by someone named
Robert Wyatt (who is apparently a famous English musician according to The
Google – who knew). The write up tries way too hard, and feels like one of
those hokey sell jobs you used to get on the cover of sixties records, minus
the charm. It is always better to let your music speak for itself.
And on that note, I will say that
as I wrote this review I gave this album another good listen, and it sounded a
lot better. It has its moments, but it just doesn’t consistently grab me.
And so with Sheila's blessing, I’m going to let it go to a home that will
appreciate it more than I do.
Best tracks: Crowd Surf
Off a Cliff, Detective Daughter
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