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Choir Of The Mind

After falling for the female voices featured on Broken Social Scene's You Forgot it in People ca. 2003, I was on the lookout for works by Leslie Feist and Emily Haines, ordering the former's album Let It Die in '04 and the debut by Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton: Knives Don't Have Your Back in '06. Come 2017 though, the release of Choir of the Mind passed me by completely: I'd heard nothing of it on the radio and hadn't so much as read a word about it anywhere either, until there came a time that I actively googled Haines' name.

I found she'd done a good deal more with Metric (though their stuff hadn't quite appealed to me in the way her solo songs had) - and then there was Choir of the Mind. I liked what I heard of it on-line, but it took me a long while before I finally obtained a copy - only last year - on CD. But - all's well that ends well: I love it and have played it often. It's not without some flaws: its reliance on simple, slow-to-mid-tempo piano parts lends it a certain sameyness, despite the variety of other textures in the mix. And to my taste it's about ten minutes too long.

Using the skip button, though, it's easily shortened by omitting the tracks I like less ('Minefield of Memory', 'Irish Exit') to better savour the rest. The opening three numbers get things off to a haunting & thought-provoking start, though my favourite part of the record comes further in, with the trio of tracks beginning with 'Perfect on the Surface', a song in which lyrics, melody & production combine to ideal effect in a commentary on the allure of the superficial. The title track comes next, the album's centrepiece, with a lengthy passage of obliquely inspirational spoken word over an insistently-repeated piano figure. And after that, 'Statuette', a sombre reflection on self-doubt and sexism, among other things. These are beautiful songs that linger in the mind & invite frequent re-acquaintance.

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