Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton
Knives Don't Have Your Back

THE REVIEW

I don't remember exactly how I got to know Emily Haines, pianist and songwriter born in 1974; what I know for sure is that it was entirely by chance.

I was probably looking for something similar to Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, or Lisa Germano on sites like Lastfm, when a whole new world suddenly opened up for me.

Granted, it's a rather limited world, given the small number of solo CDs she's conceived, but one in which I've been immersed for years and from which I don't want, nor am able, to resurface.

To tell you about her, I can say she is Canadian by adoption, grew up breathing art thanks to her poet father, Paul, and started dedicating herself to music early on by first listening and then writing.

She formed a group (of which she is the Leader), which she still indicates as her musical priority, the Metric, an indie-funky-rock-electronic band with which she recorded five albums (the last one is from 2012), simultaneously collaborating with the Broken Social Scene but above all publishing solo - under the pseudonym "Emily & The Soft Skeleton" - two CDs and an EP of ballads where her soprano vocal skills and her piano aptitude decidedly stand out. The first CD, self-produced in a limited edition (2,000 copies) is almost impossible to find, while the one I’m writing about now and nourished on for years, Knives Don't Have Your Back (2006) is easily orderable online, for those like me who feel the need to have it in original.

How can I summarize this splendid work?

I’ve been thinking for a long time of reproposing it on Debaser as the presence of a review from 2006 with only five comments (mine included) is scandalous for a similar CD, but I have never really found the right words and perhaps I won't even have them now.

In this controversial virtual living room of ours, one cannot help but talk again about a CD of such delicacy, class, and beauty, as well as of such intensity, capable of provoking profound emotions and real enrapture.

There’s nothing amiss in the arrangement, not a comma on the staff, not a smudge in Emily's intense voice, a voice seemingly thin, but capable of carving tunnels in the listener's stomach.

With shadowy melancholy and joyful surprise.

Everything becomes rarefied, the passing of time ceases to exist as conceived and constructed by our ancestors, there is no place or matter that remains as we know it, one ascends to a higher level, enveloped in a warm cocoon where words, the sounds and images evoked completely remove us from reality, to undertake a lysergic journey that starts with hearing and permeates all senses.

As if it wasn't enough, the tracklist is perfect and every song matches the previous one.

I believe I could listen to the hypnotic piano (and see the "film" in my head) of Crowd Surf Off a Cliff for hours and hours without ever getting tired, without even realizing it.

“Everywhere and every way I see you with me..…
The life that you thought through is gone
Can't want out, the ending outlasting the mood
I wake up lonely”

I'm not objective, I admit it.

But here, guys, let me tell you, this is nothing to joke about.