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

Its hard to really pin down Emily Haines into one genre, thats not uncommon in the out of the mainstream music market honestly, and though it would be easy to dismiss her and her band the Soft Skeleton as another good group lost in the shuffle of your average college radio station, I would like, if you would, to stop and take a look, and I hope you won't be disappointed. Emily Haines started out as a member of a band called metric, and eventually went on to great The Soft Skeleton, I've tired to find her old band's work, but its rather hard and seemed like alot of work just to write three lines or so about the differences, so with that said, onto the focus at hand.

I find that Knives Don't Have Your Back is strange, it sounds almost like something made in a high school music class but in its simple and low-fi feel, its just so beautiful, its melodic, lyrically complex and raw enough to hit deep down inside now and then. Its great that way. Emily's voice sounds like an uneasy, nervious teenager thats trying as best as she can to not crack under the pressure of being on stage at some high school talent show. Its that down to earth open and flawed voice that really makes you love her by the end of this.

"Our Hell" is an interesting lead off track that is rather misleading, its a song about her life and those around her and how really, their life isn't that bad. "Doctor Blind" is my favorite track on this disc, its so sweeping and majestic, I get the idea of playing in a field with someone special and just relaxing, truely beautiful. "Crowd Surf off a Cliff" is a great piano track with a spooky echo effect that haunts you as you listen, its great that way. "Detactive Daughter" is a song about nicely made track with a lovely mix of guitar, piano and rythums, its sort of a bluesish song with a very strange meaning, "The Lottery" is a very sexually changed song about a one night stand "sexual suicide" she calls it, a very strange track, but yet, addictive. "The Maid needs a Maid" is of all things, a song about a lesbian attraction to a singer, its full of innocent yet sexually charged innuendo, its abit odd, but for the oddness of it, I love it. "Mostly Waving" is a strange song that seems to make me think at one time someone tried to get Emily to conform and put being pretty for the frat boys over her music and her self respect, not my favorite lyrically but I love the mid/late 70s feel to the music of it. "Reading in Bed" is a very sad song that looks as if Emily is giving a deep look inside herself and her life asking "why are your songs so sad?" to herself, the backing music in this is amazing. "Nothing and Nowhere" is a very depressing look at big city life and how sad it can seem for those that just live day to day. "The Last Page" is a very sad song looking back at a past love, its really a haunting track in its beauty. "Winning" is a track about opening up and the prosess back to some form of normality, you can almost hear Emily crying on this one, its really kind of cool in that tearfull finale to the album type of way.

I find myself at the end of the album wanting more, like, waiting for a second disc to start up and continue this trip inside Emily's mind, and by proxy inside myself, it really makes me want to go out and buy more, I just wish I could find her old band because i'm gonna need something like that to keep my fix till she makes something else. Its a true find.

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

Artist: Emily Haines And The Soft Skeleton
Album: Knives Don't Have Your Back
Genre: Singer/Songwriter, Indie Pop, Female Vocalist, Harmonics


By: BC