2006 In Music: Notable Mentions - Part 3

This notable mention started off as a little quickie bit of text about the album and turned into a full blown essay...As a result, it deserves it's own post: 

Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton – Knives Don’t Have Your Back

I wanted to love this album…I really did…

Let me go back. My introduction to indie music came in the form of a free download of Metric’s Combat Baby on the iTunes Music Store in what to have been late ’03 or early ’04 (because iTunes for Windows was new). Before this time, I mostly listened to classic rock, and in some ways I was bored. My roommate (who listened to Linkin Park, Metallica, and some country shit I’m glad I don’t know the name of) jokingly challenged me to find something from the last 10 years. Before that free track, I had no idea that the kind of music I wanted to listen to existed. A doorway had opened.

The next year, my dorm was filled with iTunes users, and we all swapped music through the music sharing feature. There was a girl upstairs who was into tons of girl rock stuff and she had Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?, which I promptly fell in love with.

Metric led to Broken Social Scene and Stars…Investigation of other Canadian music led to the New Pornographers, Destroyer, and Arcade Fire…To make a long story short, Emily Haines was basically my introduction to indie music and thus the gateway to this awesome stuff I’m listening to today.

Which is why I really wanted to love Knives Don’t Have Your Back. But I didn’t.

This is not a bad album; not by a long shot. But, in a year of awesome and surprising solo albums from other female artists, it just doesn’t impress the way Jenny Lewis’s album did or sounding interesting in the way that Amy Milan’s album did, or sound as soulful as Chan Marshall’s. A solo album should be a showcase of an artist’s capabilities, and while there is clearly talent displayed on this album, we don’t see every facet of the artist. Where is the more wistful Emily of Calculation Theme or Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl on this album? This is an album that sounds too much like a rainy day. I know that Emily Haines tends to gravitate toward the dark and foreboding, but we already know that she doesn’t have to! That’s what made Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?, where she sounded much more multi-faceted, so great.

This is not to say that there aren’t good songs on Knives Don’t Have Your Back. Mostly Waving sounds like a good Metric song that’s been slowed down. It’s full of classic Haines tongue twisters, and those horns are intoxicating. Reading In Bed approaches the kind of range I wanted to hear on this album. If you’re in the mood for downer music, it doesn’t get much better than The Last Page. Doctor Blind is clearly another high point, one that will get caught in your head for at least a week.

The real high point of the album, though, is the awesome packaging. It’s done like a hardcover book, with the booklet attached to the binding to become the pages. Interspersed in the lyrics are X-Rays, of all things. The back cover has an “author photo” of Ms. Haines and a reviewer’s quote. I love the way that Knives Don’t Have Your Back seems to tower over the other CDs in my collection.

This is a good album…The problem is that I was expecting a great album.