Emily Haines

Thu 27th May, 2010 in Features

Once declaring that, “I love music so much sometimes I’m embarrassed to admit how much I love it,” Canadian singer, song writer and pianist Emily Haines is, in many ways, the ultimate musician.

Whether it be as front woman for indie/rock group Metric, member of the Canadian all star collective Broken Social Scene, solo artist or guest vocalist, musically, Haines seems to have no limits.

Her talent, together with her willingness and eagerness to be constantly involved in music, irrespective of any moulds or genres placed upon her, recently lead to Lou Reed’s decision to invite her to join this year’s Vivid LIVE Festival.

Hi Emily, how are you going? I believe your hotel was evacuated due to a fire earlier?

Haha… yeah, we’re setting things on fire with our minds.

Throwing TVs out of windows, that kind of thing?

That’s right, yeah.

You’re coming to Australia in a few weeks to be part of the Vivid Live festival in Sydney. How are preparations for it going?

It’s great, such an interesting way that it came about. I played an event in Vancouver with Lou Reed, which was a Neil Young tribute, and got a chance to meet him. To my amazement, he was familiar with Metric, and talked to me about my lyrics and my work – it was really a great friendship right off the bat.

Then a few days later, he and Laurie invited Metric to come and play in Sydney as part of the festival they’re curating. The band can’t do it, it’s just logistically impossible, so what I’m doing – which I admit is also logistically impossible, but somehow we’re making it happen!

I’ll be performing Fantasies on piano with a string quartet. I’m having my string arranger in Toronto write, for the first time, arrangements of the whole album. So I’m really excited to try it, it’ll be an interesting new version of familiar songs.

Sounds like it’s come together quite quickly. As well as Metric songs, you’ll also be playing some of your solo work I believe?

I don’t know, I think there was some discussion of that, but I think it’s more interesting if I just do… I want to do Fantasies and maybe a couple of surprise tracks, but it’s not really about a ‘solo concert’ so much as a reinterpretation of Metric.

The band actually released an acoustic EP, Plug In Plug Out, late last year, which contained about five tracks from Fantasies. Do you think that process, stripping down the songs, will help you with a string quartet?

It’s part of it… in fact, a lot of the work we’ve done on this record is really experimenting with different versions of the songs, instead of just being something that’s produced as the definitive version on the album and then it’s kind of stuck.

Even in the writing of this record, we did what we called the ‘can’t hide’ test, where it’s like no matter electro the thing sounds in the end, can you sit around and play it with a guitar?

For every song on that record, other than Stadium Love, which should never be played on an acoustic guitar! You can do that with those songs. So this will be just another variation on that idea, that if the architecture of the song is strong, you can really play around with different genres and ways that the song itself can be expressed.

You’re playing in the Opera Theatre at the Sydney Opera House, where the acoustics are unbelievable. From a performance perspective, do you think it’s easier to play in custom built music venues like that?

It’s part of what I really enjoy about being in Metric, is that we get to have so many extreme circumstances thrown our way. That’s the point of being a musician, is that you absorb and adopt them, and find yourself growing out of that process.

We’ve already, in our lives, had… like, playing with the Rolling Stones for two nights at Madison Square Garden, or playing to a tiny crowd of sweaty kids in Birmingham.

We keep that going – big festivals, small intimate things, Bon Jovi-style aeroplane-hangar kind of venues or beautiful theatres. So I’m hoping this will just be another way for me to improve as a musician, and you’re absolutely right, you react to the space you’re in.

When we need to be punk rock we definitely are, and I personally really appreciate the opportunity to just be immersed in the sound, and not be responsible for thousands of people partying.

Much like yourself, Lou Reed has tried his hand at a lot of different things; most recently appearing on the Gorillaz album Plastic Beach, which for many would have been an ‘interesting’ collaboration, and you appeared on a Tiesto track [ Knock You Out last year, which is completely different again. Do you think that’s something you saw eye to eye on, experimenting with different genres and projects?

Definitely. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but that’s insightful.

It’s true, speaking for myself, I always feel like I’m drawn to collaborations that are as far from what I’m associated with normally as possible. Hence Tiesto, and the Crystal Method [on their track Come Back Clean ], because I think dance-floor diva is pretty much the opposite of who I am!

It makes for great entertainment for my friends and fans, who enjoy the idea that a collaboration takes you outside of what you’re normally comfortable with and associated with.

Part of the purpose behind Vivid LIVE is giving people the opportunity, and perhaps forcing audience members, to go and see something completely different than what they would usually pay to see. For example, curator Laurie Anderson suggested in a recent interview that you may be convinced to go and see a Chinese Opera at the festival

I read that interview, I thought that was so well put. Or more recently they were discussing a concert for dogs, so clearly everyone’s welcome!

Definitely, and, as you’ve just said, you enjoy trying your hand at different things, but how often do you go and watch something or listen to something different? Is that something you push yourself to do?

I do, and it’s because I’ve always felt this way, I’m not particularly tied to a genre. Generally, listening to music, I’m more interested in things that are as different from what I’m doing as possible. I guess that’s the point, isn’t it – everything you get comfortable with, you have to remember that at some point you discovered it.

If you were to curate a festival like Vivid LIVE, say in the next six months, who are the three artists you’d put on the line-up?

Oh, wow…

No limits apply here!

Normally this is the kind of thing, with an email interview, I could sit on an aeroplane and put lots of thought into it.

One of the artists I would definitely have, as a musician, would be M.I.A., and it would be interesting to put her in collaboration with other people. Robert Wyatt, and who’s my magical third… I guess these have to be people who are alive…You knew there would have to be some kind of pause in this one, and then afterwards I’d be like ‘dammit, why didn’t I think of someone more out than that’! Carla Bley, who’s a jazz composer.

*Metric’s Emily Haines plays with a string quartet Vivid LIVE at the Sydney Opera Theatre on Tuesday 1st June and Friday 4th June.