Number 3 of 2006 — Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton: Knives Don’t Have Your Back

I often wonder what would have happened to all concerned if Kristin Hersh and Tanya Donelly’s solo careers had started whilst they were both in Throwing Muses. Back in the 1980s, moonlighting as a solo artist wasn’t the done thing, but in this century, with the democratisation of music it seems that everyone wants to be a solo artist or if not that, then a collaborator with other musicians. Time between albums or tours is an ideal opportunity to create, or if you’re Charlotte Hatherley, time out during tours works too.

So it is that I start this review with a reflection on Charlotte’s debut album – at the end of my review of that album I concluded that she didn’t need Ash, such were her achievements on Grey Will Fade. She’s now a solo artist. Now I ponder on reaching almost the same conclusion on Emily Haines’ album. With two differences: Knives Don’t Have Your Back isn’t her debut – that honour goes to the rare 1996 album Cut in Half and Also Double, and you need to replace Ash with Metric.

Recorded over a period of four years in various cities in Canada and the US, Knives is continents away from the alt-pop of her life with Metric. Knives has two emotional companions: it recalls the loss and intimacy of Kristin Hersh’s The Grotto and the picking of wounds gathered on Hannah Fury’s Through The Gash. It’s not merely a Metric album without guitars, because there are guitars. Occasionally. Based primarily around her voice and piano, these two instruments develop sparse, open, bleak and exhausting music. Here, Emily’s piano work isn’t as intricate as her peers, deliberately so. Notes and chords are used sparingly to tie the dots between the lyrics and to change or twist the mood of a song as they require. It’s masterful due to what’s missing. Likewise her voice, which is in a permanent state of expiry. You wonder if she can manage another verse before the weariness takes its toll and a song stops short, half-finished. Many of the songs appear to end in decay rather than reach a satisfying finale. This is best illustrated on the lengthy Crowd Surf Off A Cliff where the vast reverb on Emily’s voice mirrors her isolation and the yearning for companionship – “Rather give the world away than wake up lonely.” But, as with Charlotte Martin’s Redeemed, the final track Winning breaks through to a resolution: a lullaby that hints at optimism – “What’s a wolf without a pack?” and the mending of broken hearts, broken relationships.

Accompanying Emily are an ad-hoc collection of musical friends who provide understated but crucial support to many of the songs. Opening track Our Hell wouldn’t be as black without the woodwind break. The key to their success is they never seek to draw attention from the focus of the song: the voice, the lyrics, the piano. Even when The Tokai String Quartet’s strings bloom (as they do on Doctor Blind’s intro and its other rising falls) there is balance in the arrangement and mixing. The treatment given to The Lottery is similar, collections of half-stopped measures, giving way to shockingly beautiful cascades of strings. This culminates in the screaming brass of Mostly Waving, which joins Emily’s voice to wail inconclusively but never drowns it.

Because of this constructive eloquence, the primary lasting impression of the album is just Emily’s voice and lyrics. Whilst you can play it to others, it’s really an album to keep to yourself, because the lyrics will cause you to reflect on your own circumstances. Which songs mean most to you will vary as your life changes and as you become more familiar with them. Other reviewers are only now appreciating this. It’s an album you shouldn’t ignore.

Amazon UK – with bonus tracks
iTunes UK