''Knives Don't Have Your Back'' is the debut

studio album An album is a collection of audio recordings (e.g., music) issued on a medium such as compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl (record), audio tape (like 8-track cartridge, 8-track or Cassette tape, cassette), or digital distribution, dig ...

by Canadian singer-songwriter

Emily Haines Emily Savitri Haines (born 25 January 1974) is a Canadian singer and songwriter. She is the lead singer, keyboardist and songwriter of the rock band Metric and a member of the musical collective Broken Social Scene. As a solo artist, she has pe ...

and the Soft Skeleton. It is not her own debut album, as she released under her own name in limited number of copies an earlier work in 1996, the ''

Cut in Half and Also Double ''Cut in Half and Also Double'' is the debut album by Canadian artist Emily Haines that she self-released in about 2,000 copies in 1996 in Toronto. The song "Carpet" contains similar lyrics and vocal melodies to those in " Too Little Too Late, ...

'' album, which was self-released. The album was released in September 2006 on

Last Gang Records Last Gang Records is a record label formed by Canadian music industry lawyer Chris Taylor and concert promoter Donald K. Tarlton in the fall of 2003 at the Pop Montreal Music Festival. Last Gang was nominated as Independent Record Label of th ...

. It debuted at 28 in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

and has sold 20,000 copies there. She has stated that

Metric Metric or metrical may refer to: Measuring * Metric system, an internationally adopted decimal system of measurement * An adjective indicating relation to measurement in general, or a noun describing a specific type of measurement Mathematics ...

is still her first priority. The album is a collection of piano-driven songs backed with soft strings and horns and is said to feature guest spots by

Sparklehorse Sparklehorse was an American indie rock band from Richmond, Virginia, led by singer and multi-instrumentalist Mark Linkous. It was active from 1995 until Linkous's 2010 death. Before forming Sparklehorse, Linkous fronted local bands Johnson Fa ...

's Scott Minor, members of

Stars A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by self-gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night; their immense distances from Earth make them appear as fixed points of ...

Broken Social Scene Broken Social Scene is a Canadian indie rock band and musical collective including as few as six and as many as nineteen members, formed by Kevin Drew (vocals, guitar) and Brendan Canning (vocals, bass) in 1999. Alongside Drew and Canning, the ...

and

. She is quoted as saying the following: "When I was a little kid…I would creep downstairs to the piano and write rudimentary songs about imaginary places. I'm told the first song I ever wrote was a love song to a cranberry tree. I always used the mute pedal. I hated the idea of anybody hearing me. Everywhere I've lived while working with Metric, I've written songs on the piano and played them for no one. On the advice of a friend, I decided I'd better start recording them before they were forgotten. Four meandering years later I ended up with this collection of songs featuring a few of my favorite people, a group I call The Soft Skeleton." The album's art is based on that of ''

Escalator over the Hill ''Escalator over the Hill'' (or ''EOTH'') is mostly referred to as a jazz opera, but it was released as a "chronotransduction", with "words by Paul Haines (poet), Paul Haines, adaptation and music by Carla Bley, production and coordination by Mic ...

'', Haines' late father Paul Haines' album with

Carla Bley Carla Bley (born Lovella May Borg; May 11, 1936 – October 17, 2023) was an American jazz composer, pianist, organist, and bandleader. An important figure in the free jazz movement of the 1960s, she gained acclaim for her jazz opera ''Escalator ...

. The album was "critically lauded", and was considered one of the best albums of 2006. At

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, which assigns a

normalized Normalization or normalisation refers to a process that makes something more normal or regular. Science * Normalization process theory, a sociological theory of the implementation of new technologies or innovations * Normalization model, used in ...

rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, it received an

average In colloquial, ordinary language, an average is a single number or value that best represents a set of data. The type of average taken as most typically representative of a list of numbers is the arithmetic mean the sum of the numbers divided by ...

score of 73 based on 18 reviews. The song "Doctor Blind" was rated #457 on

Pitchfork Media ''Pitchfork'' (formerly ''Pitchfork Media'') is an American online music magazine founded in 1996 by Ryan Schreiber in Minneapolis. It originally covered Alternative rock, alternative and independent music, and expanded to cover genres includin ...

's Top 500 Tracks of the 2000s. The original UK and Ireland CD release featured 3 bonus tracks: "The Bank", "Bottom Of The World" and "Sprig". The Japanese release, meanwhile, featured 2 bonus tracks: "Sprig" and "Rowboat.

All of the bonus tracks later appeared on 2007's What Is Free to a Good Home? EP.

Track listing

UK bonus tracks

Japan bonus tracks

References