Years ago, when she began working on her first proper solo album, Emily Haines couldn't possibly have known that she'd have become one of indie rock's very few sex symbols by the time it was released. But the fact that it worked out that way makes its release tonight - at a Toronto filmfest party that will also celebrate Guy Maddin's Brand Upon The Brain and feature the Winnipeg auteur's projections - all the more necessary for her.
Haines doesn't quite put it that way, of course. Determined as ever to paint Metric as a team effort - which, musically, the Toronto-based four-piece very much is - the soft-spoken singer is uncomfortable even broaching her role at its forefront. But she acknowledges that, given Metric's meteoric rise since last year's release of the Polaris Prize-nominated Live It Out, a brief pause for her solo career is essential to maintaining control of her identity.
Until recently, after all, Haines was known less for her electric Metric performances than for her chameleon-like talents - able to strut her way through synth-rock anthems like Dead Disco one minute, and purr her way through Broken Social Scene's gorgeously melancholy Anthems for a 17-Year-Old Girl the next. But as Metric has gone from playing small clubs to filling concert halls, playing the MuchMusic Video Awards and opening for the Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden, she's so grown into the role of glamorous front woman that it's easy to forget her other talents.
"I started to feel like Elvis for a second there - I felt like I was moments away from coming on stage in a cape or something," Haines says. "In Canada and the U.S., the shows are becoming a really big production."
Metric's recent tour of Britain, where Live It Out is only now taking off, brought relief with a return to cosier venues. But to really get back in touch with other facets of her musical self, Knives Don't Have Your Back will go much further.
Gone from the studio are all the guitars, synths and the energetic, politicized dance-rock; in their place are sombre, reflective piano ballads that require an intimate, living-room listen rather than to be blasted from the car stereo. And it's a fair bet that Haines' energetic, in-your-face stage manner - along with her notoriously short skirts - will be absent from the new disc's live airing, replaced with the singer seated at her piano with a pair of restrained accompanying musicians alongside her.
Switching between her solo shows and those with Metric, with whom she was performing as recently as last week, would appear to be a tall order. But Haines insists that it's less about shifting personas than about being a full person.
"I couldn't have made this record without Metric," she says. "Because I really love rock 'n' roll. It's kind of like this is the companion to that. This is what you listen to when you come home from that.
"I'm one person with different facets," she adds. "I think it's one of the reasons bands implode - people lose sight of that within themselves. They think that they are just this one-dimensional thing. Part of the point of releasing this music as well, is to be a whole person. It really is more like the hours in the day than being a different person - this record is like five o'clock in the morning, and Metric is midnight.
"I don't have a persona. It's all honest."
