Knives Don't Have Your Back

Knives is a quietly simmering LP.

Knives Don't Have Your Back is like the soundtrack to an excellent Alfred Hitchcock film. [Oct 2006, p.200]

Knives Don't Have Your Back is a striking contrast--and a poignant, subtle companion--to last year's Live It Out.

A lovely record. [Summer 2006]

Haines has... shown glimpses of a broken and beautiful solo artist just waiting to tell her story. This, my friends, is that breakout album in spades. [Oct 2006, p.122]

With such sparse instrumentation, these songs are still thick; there may not be a beat here to dance to but there is a lot to grab on to certainly.

Haines... is shaping up as the most impressive writer of the current wave of Canadian indie. [Jul 2007, p.103]

The results unfold like a well-plotted novel.

etric's clunky riffage and hi-hat beats are replaced by simple piano figures and subtle adornments (strings, feedback, breathing organ) that draw out Haines' most stirring vocal performances to date, and the muted milieu highlights her natural, sensuous whisper, lending a sympathetic thrust to these broken-down anthems for a thirtysomething girl.

Stripped of their cosmetics, some tunes on Knives Don't Have Your Back seem underdeveloped, but they prove what always needs to be proved in the vortex of postmodern pop--that an artist like Haines can do more than hide behind her influences.