I wanna live it up
photo:
‘s Fantasies was likely one of my favourite albums of the year. I always loved Emily Haines, especially the stripped down acoustic Emily. The Emily and the Soft Skeleton, Emily. The piano heavy, vocals soft Emily. Her solo EP ‘What is Free to a Good Home’ and full-length, ‘Knives Don’t Have Your Back’ a few years back were both so saturated with sadness, haunted with Elliot Smith like-prose, ‘with all the luck you’ve had, why are your songs so sad?’ These excruciating and beautiful songs lead us into the depths of her- into the fears looming and wading beneath wisps of blonde covering a serious face.
I started re-listening to Emily sometime this past spring, I listened to the whole album from a morning drive from Birmingham back to Nashville something quite literally clicked in my head. Emily appears delicate, but she is ferocious in her writing. The intensity of her words laid over the sweetness of her melodies alludes to tension between all our attempts to divorce from femininity and embrace strength, to become a force- but there is something inescapable that leaves all our attempts in failure. It is only in the celebration of the softness and thoughtfulness that we are fully ourselves. Fragility in form can be deceiving, women still remain some of the most elusive creatures on this planet, we are simply unknowable.
I found this collection of acoustic Metric songs, the art of elimination leaves room for error and truth.
Metric- Between the Bars (Elliot Smith Cover)
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Metric- Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright (Bob Dylan Cover)
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Metric- Combat Baby
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Metric- Calculation Theme
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Metric- Love is a Place
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Metric- Gimme Sympathy
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Metric- Twilight Galaxy
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Metric- Ending Start
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Metric- Live it Out
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