Emily Haines Finds a Way to Hear Her Father's Voice Again

July 23, 2007

Some girls get their father's sense of humour. Some find themselves struck with an uncanny resemblance in their eyes. In the case of Metric frontwoman Emily Haines, well, she got her father's prodigious power to capture the big things in life with little musical words and his nomadic spirit that's kept her travelling the world, collecting experiences rather than material objects.

Emily's father, Paul Haines, was a musician who never played an instrument: he was known for his experimental jazz journalism, linear notes, poems and lyrics, which had an unorthodox musicality to them. Sly, cryptic and oddly hilarious, he collaborated with dozens of artists over the years, and now, he's made an appearance on his daughter's new EP, What is Free to a Good Home?, which takes its title from one of Paul's poems. The songs on the six-song album were recorded shortly after Paul's death by Emily as a sort of continuation of the artistic conversation the pair had enjoyed since she first crawled onto the piano and wrote her first song (a love song to a cranberry tree).

"It was like getting to hang out with him again and getting to have a conversation again. That's definitely been the main thing," Emily explains. "And, as an artist, creatively, since he died, it's been such a theme to me. I didn't even realize what I had growing up and then, when it was gone, I realized all my creative life was around this conversation I was having with my dad. But his half of the conversation ended."

Emily also put one of her father's poems to music on the album -- "Sprig," a quiet yet haunting piano number that hinges on the concept "making of a life a forged painting." Although many musicians had set Paul's unique brand of prose to melody in the past, Emily says she hadn't ever considered it until after his sudden death in 2003.

"When you read some of those poems, you can hear the cadence and the melody of it," Emily explains. "For me, it never occurred for me to do it, but I read that poem, and I just sat down at the piano – it was like it wrote itself. I was over at Dave Newfeld's house – who did all the Broken Social Scene records – and I just sat down and they recorded it the practically the first time I played it."

In conjunction with What is Free to a Good Home?, Emily is also releasing a book of her father's largely unpublished works entitled Secret Carnival Workers. The 232-page collection brandishes Paul's quirky style in all its unique forms, and Emily took care in selecting each work.

"My dad's work has always been perceived as really obscure and difficult – I think there are aspects of that because he was a part of the experimental jazz world – but at the same time, he is a person," she explains. "I think his strongest writing is when, with very few words, he can capture the subtlest undercurrents of things everyone can relate to."

Like her father, Emily also shows off her skill for thought-provoking turns-of-phrase on her new EP. On the quietly brooding "The Bank," she sings of finding a new drug, be it money, partying or drinking that "does what it should," reflecting on her distaste for peoples tendencies to work hard only to reward themselves with vacant vices.

"It's about everything we're supposed to work for and how it can be depressing if you don't care about those things, but those are supposed to be your rewards," she reveals of the song. "You're supposed to get excited about a cran-tini and if you just can't, what's your reward then?"

Throughout her life, Emily has chosen experiences, artistic collaboration and touring the world, much like her father, over cran-tinis and the consumer lifestyle, something that she cautiously prides herself on.

"I started to really freak out about it [not having a normal life] and then I stopped because who the hell do I think I am? Am I supposed to have everything at once?," Emily reveals. "I definitely want to have a family and all that. I'd like to have a normal life, although I've been assured that I never will. … But I've decided that, right now, I'm in a band, this is what I want to do, and then all those things that I'm afraid I'm not going to have, I can dedicate myself to later."

But that doesn't mean just being an artist has been all easy, either. Haines admits she took a huge risk releasing What is Free to a Good Home and predecessor Knives Don't Have Your Back because both showed off a much more personal side of her, one that seemed quite different from the spunky, crowd-diving frontwoman we knew from Metric.

"There was a moment when I was really scared," she reveals. "I opened myself up to that creatively and showed people another side to who I am. I was like, ‘Fuck, I hope they realize this is not a game to me.' It's something I had to do."