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I was surprised to see that the liner notes for the recent solo album by Metric singer Emily Haines—who plays tonight at the Lakeshore—were written by the great British songwriter and singer Robert Wyatt, a one-time member of Soft Machine and a solo artist of rare sensitivity, intelligence, and beauty. Even though I wasn’t particularly impressed by the record, who was I to doubt Wyatt’s endorsement? Things made more sense after reading this profile of Haines by Greg Kot. Her father was poet Paul Haines, an excellent, whimsical writer who also happened to be a huge jazz fan. He collaborated with a number of great artists, most famously writing the libretto for Carla Bley‘s classic Escalator Over the Hill. Nearly two decades later the fine jazz-rock group Curlew set some of his words to music on the sadly out-of-print A Beautiful Western Saddle, with vocals by Seattle new music figure Amy Denio. Around the same time American Clave Records released a stunning 2CD set called Darn It! that showed the affinity jazz and new music artists felt for Haines’s writing. Among the contributors were Evan Parker, John Tchicai, Derek Bailey, Paul Bley, Andrew Cyrille, Cream’s Jack Bruce, and DNA’s Tim Wright.
