Last Gang Records is excited to announce that Emily Haines, frontwoman for Toronto 4-piece Metric, will be releasing her debut album as a solo artist. ‘Knives Dont Have Your Back’, due out September 26th, was written and recorded over the past four years in Los Angeles, Montreal, Toronto and New York, and has contributions from the likes of Scott Minor from Sparklehorse, Broken Social Scene’s Justin Peroff, Stars’ Evan Cranley and Metric’s Jimmy Shaw. A distinct contrast from Metric’s bold, danceable sound, KNIVES is an intimate and subtle collection of mellow, piano-driven tunes complimented by soft string and horn arrangements.
Haines’ decision to release a solo album was long in the making. She recalls, “When I was a little kid…I would creep downstairs to the piano and write rudimentary songs about imaginary places. I’m told the first song I ever wrote was a love song to a cranberry tree. I always used the mute pedal. I hated the idea of anybody hearing me. Everywhere I’ve lived while working with Metric, I’ve written songs on the piano and played them for no one. On the advice of a friend, I decided I’d better start recording them before they were forgotten. Four meandering years later I ended up with this collection of songs featuring a few of my favorite people, a group I call The Soft Skeleton.”
Each song on the album holds a personal story from Haines’ life over the past decade. One track, for instance, was written years ago while she was studying electroacoustics in Montreal, and is an homage to childhood heroes Carla Bley and Robert Wyatt. Several songs, including “Reading in Bed” and “Mostly Waving” were recorded in Toronto during the winter of 2002, while Haines was mourning the sudden loss of her father, poet Paul Haines. A handful of songs were conceived during Metric’s early years, when the band was struggling to make ends meet, while more recent tracks were written with a change in perspective, as Haines faced Metric’s growing success.
In the spring and summer of 2005, Haines enlisted local musician Todor Kobakov to add string arrangements to a few songs, while friends from Broken Social Scene and Stars added horns to other tracks. Over the past few months, she has worked with producer John O’Mahony (Metric, The Strokes, System of a Down) at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, and Magic Shop in New York. O’Mahony introduced Emily to the final contributor of ‘Knives’: Scott Minor from the band Sparklehorse, who added several instrumental tracks as well as “various mysterious noises from Nashville.” Finally, as Haines says, “The scattered songs fell together.”
tracklisting
1. Our Hell
2. The Lottery
3. Doctor Blind
4. Nothing & Nowhere
5. Crowd Surf Off a Cliff
6. The Maid Needs a Maid
7. Mostly Waving
8. City of Night
9. Reading in Bed
10. Detective Daughter
11. Winning
12. The Last Page
