When I first heard Emily Haines, it was in a Polaroid commercial. There were no credits, and I couldn't find anything on the Internets to tell me who performed that stumbling beat, sweet vocals and, for a commercial, eerily dark lyrics ("If this is the life, why does it feel so good to die today? Blue to grey, grow up and blow away..")
Finally I found the answer. It was at least the 5th time I'd gone looking, and after the commercial ran for several months. Metric. That's how I found Emily Haines, and I'm still a bit upset that I didn't catch on just that much earlier.
Metric is alive and well, but Emily's a lot of talent for just one act. Enter Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton, a side project that would have difficulty defining itself as anything further removed from Metric's noisy and gutsy sound.
Creepy, haunting and irresistible is how I would describe this track from the new Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton album, "Don't Have Your Back". Easy comparison to Regina Spektor, Fiona Apple, or Sarah McLachlan but, none of those pin Haines exactly; she is totally her own brand of chanteuse.
Check out the video for Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton - Doctor Blind after the jump
1. a) they changed the lyrics to grow up and blow away in the commercial to "why does it feel so good to fly away."
b) the record is called "Knives Don't Have Your Back."
c) Aside from the piano and ballad classification, she sounds very little like regina spektor or sarah mclaughlin. fiona apple i can sort of see.
Posted at 12:18PM on Nov 14th 2006 by tanner