Emily Haines @ Sydney OperaHouse (01/06/10)

Fri 4th Jun, 2010 in Gig Reviews

“I love you, Emily!”
The strained shout from a tiny female voice rings out from a corner of the Opera Theatre of the Sydney Opera House. It is met with a millisecond of uncomfortable laughter and a complete shun from Emily herself. What a difference eight months and a change of scenery makes.

The above cheer – the only one heard the entire evening – certainly wouldn’t have been out of place at Haines’ last Australian appearance, as one of the drawcards of the Parklife festival with her band, Metric. This time around, however, Haines was without her beloved band. A string quartet and a side-stage sound manipulator took their place; and the songs we sang our hearts out to at Parklife were presented in the most different way possible.

Blindness, one of the slower numbers from Metric’s superb Fantasies record, commenced the evening. Haines paced in a circle in the middle of the stage, her gold jacket shimmying beneath the theatre lights and her unmistakable voice breathy and emotional as the string section slowly swelled atop pre-programmed ambience. We remained silent, in awe of this transformation. This continued throughout Haines’ performance, not moving a single muscle on our bodies until something on stage signified the end of a piece.

Other favourites from Fantasies unfurled – the gorgeous Twilight Galaxy saw Haines croon from the baby grand piano, impressively projecting both parts of the call-and-response chorus; whilst the normally upbeat rocker Gold Guns Girls was slowed to a crawl and stripped of one of its hooks, nevertheless triumphing for its efforts to shift boisterous pop into piano balladry. It’s nothing but a major credit to Haines and her band that these terrific compositions, normally so expansive in nature, could still hold substantial weight when so much has been taken from them.

Perhaps the most touching moment of the evening was when Haines turned to the audience and broke the silence by speaking of the inspirations that got her to where she is today. The first was her father, the late Paul Haines – she read an excerpt of one of his poems with an air of nervousness to her tone, followed by a smile full of pride when the crowd applauded.

The second was Neil Young – she had teased at covering Hey Hey, My My during Parklife and this time around turned her focus to Young’s work with Buffalo Springfield, covering Expecting to Fly. Haines squeezed the feeling out of every last syllable, raising her melodies heavens-high and engrossing herself in the song entirely, as if she had written it herself. Haines might be in her thirties, but the passion and awe she finds in her love affair with music remains as fresh and invigorating as a teenager’s, and this section of the show reinforced this sentiment completely.

It was Fantasies’ lead single and opening track, Help I’m Alive, that concluded the evening – sadly less than an hour after it commenced. We could have heard Sick Muse, maybe an older song like Monster Hospital, even some Broken Social Scene or Soft Skeleton tracks would have been welcomed. Despite this significant flaw in proceedings, what we did experience while Haines was with us was more than worthy of our time.

This was a fascinating evening of revisiting and reimagining what one can do with a three-minute pop song with little else but strings and a vivid imagination. Thanks, Lou. Thanks, Laurie. And thank you very, very much, Ms. Haines. We owe you one for this.

Check out the photos from the show