Emily Haines

Emily Haines
Emily Haines performing live with her band Metric at Coachella 2008
Background information
Born	25 January 1974 (1974-01-25) New Delhi, India
Origin	Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Genres	Indie rock, New Wave
Occupations	Singer-songwriter
Instruments	Vocals, keyboards, piano, guitar
Years active	1990–present
Labels	Metric Music International Last Gang Drowned in Sound Recordings
Associated acts	Metric, Broken Social Scene
Website	emilyhaines.com
Notable instruments
Sequential Circuits Pro-One E-mu PK-6 Proteus Keys

Emily Haines (born 25 January 1974^{[citation needed]} in New Delhi, India^{[citation needed]}) is a Canadian indie rock singer-songwriter. She is the lead singer and keyboardist of the band Metric and a member of Broken Social Scene. As a solo artist, she performed with her own name and under the alias Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton. Her voice is contralto.

Biography

Emily Haines was born in New Delhi, India, and raised in Canada. She is the daughter of Canadian poet Paul Haines. Her sister is the Canadian television journalist Avery Haines and her brother is Tim Haines, owner of Bluestreak Records in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada.

After settling in Peterborough at the age of three, she grew up in a house rich with experimental art and musical expression. Paul would often make cassettes of rare and eclectic music for his daughter to listen to and her early influences included Carla Bley, Robert Wyatt, and later PJ Harvey. By her teens she followed her parents' footsteps by attending the Etobicoke School of the Arts (ESA) to study drama. There she met Amy Millan and Kevin Drew, with whom she would later collaborate in hHead. Emily also briefly dated Kevin Drew.

Haines and Millan formed their first band around 1990 while at ESA, and with songs later written and recorded while at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in 1992–1993, at Toronto in 1995, and at Concordia University in Montreal in 1995–1996. The result was Cut in Half and Also Double distributed in 1996 with a limited number of copies. The song "Carpet" bears a resemblance to a song later recorded by Metric, "Too Little Too Late".

Emily Haines playing the Ottawa Bluesfest 2010.

Emily Haines met James Shaw in Toronto, and the two of them began dating and making music. They took the name Metric in 1999 after a synthesizer beat that Shaw used on his sampler and as a reference to their musical precision. The two moved to New York, where they recruited their rhythm section and began recording. In 2001, the bassist Joshua Winstead and the drummer Jules Scott-Key joined the band. Metric released four studio albums so far: Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? in 2003, Live It Out in 2005, Grow Up and Blow Away in 2007 (but recorded in 2001) and Fantasies in 2009.

In 2004, Metric appeared in the 2004 drama film Clean. Emily Haines and the rest of the band, appearing as themselves, performed their song "Dead Disco" and then went backstage for a small speaking role. "Dead Disco" also featured on Clean Original Soundtrack.

In 2006, she released the studio album Knives Don't Have Your Back under the moniker Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton. The songs "Our Hell" and "Dr. Blind" were issued as singles. Knives Don't Have Your Back was followed in 2007 by the EP What Is Free to a Good Home?. These recordings were inspired by the death of her father, poet Paul Haines.

“	I found myself with a body of work that was dealing with a whole whack of themes that really weren’t suited to Metric. It would’ve been very strange to bring those songs to a band. The way Metric songs usually develop is that I write something on the piano that sounds a lot like those songs.	”
—Emily Haines,

Her solo work is typically more mellow and piano-based than her work with Metric. She occasionally plays a limited number of solo shows, often with Amy Millan as the opening act.

Currently her band Metric is working on their fifth studio album.

Guest appearances

• Emily Haines made a cameo appearance on the k-os music video, "Man I Used to Be".
• She can also be seen on The Stills music video for "Love and Death" playing a secretary.
• Haines stars in Julian Plenti's music video for the song "Games For Days".
• Metric also contributed an unreleased track called "Black Sheep" to the soundtrack for the film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.
• A new song, entitled "Eclipse (All Yours)", was the theme of the film The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.
• "Crowd Surf Off a Cliff" could be heard in the first season of Rookie Blue.

Discography

Emily Haines

• Cut in Half and Also Double (1996)

Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton

Albums

• Knives Don't Have Your Back (2006, #28 in Canada)

EPs

• What Is Free to a Good Home? (2007)

Singles

• "Dr. Blind"
• "Our Hell"

Metric

Albums

• Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? (2003)
• Live It Out (2005)
• Grow Up and Blow Away (2007, recorded in 2001)
• Fantasies (2009)

EPs

• Mainstream EP (1998)
• Static Anonymity (2001)
• Live at Metropolis (2007)
• Plug In Plug Out (2009)
• iTunes Session EP (2011)

DVDs

• Live at Metropolis (2008)

Collaborations

The following songs are credited with Emily Haines on either lead or backing vocals:

• Broken Social Scene – "Looks Just Like the Sun", "Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl", "Backyards", "Her Disappearing Theme", "Swimmers", "Bandwitch", "Superconnected", "Windsurfing Nation", "Sentimental X's"
• Delerium — "Stopwatch Hearts" (from Chimera)
• Jason Collett — "Fire", "Hangover Days" (Emily is actually in the video edit of the song "Fire". The album version credits the female backing vocals to Amy Millan.)
• KC Accidental — "Them (Pop Song #3333)"
• MSTRKRFT — "She's Good For Business"
• Stars — "Going, Going, Gone", "On Peak Hill"
• The Stills — "Baby Blues"
• k-os — "Uptown Girl"
• Tiësto — "Knock You Out" (from Kaleidoscope)
• The Crystal Method — "Come Back Clean" (from Divided by Night)
• Todor Kobakov — "Carpe Diem"
• Wavin' Flag — Young Artists for Haiti

Filmography

• Clean (2004, as herself)
• This Movie is Broken (2010, performing with Broken Social Scene)

References

• Chan, Alvin. “Emily Haines – Pop Princess Sharpens her Knives”. MusicOMH.com. http://www.musicomh.com/interviews/emily-haines_0607.htm. Accessed 28 July 2008.
• Sweeny, Joey. “Indie Pop Goes Twee”. The Rock History Reader. Ed. Theo Cateforis New York: Routledge, 2007.

External links

• Emily Haines official site
• Metric official website
• Metric official French website