1/26/07, 5:53 pm EST

Assignment Three Finalist: Paul de Revere on Emily Haines (Washington, D.C.)

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Note: This is not an official Rolling Stone article. What follows is a submission to the “I’m From Rolling Stone” writing competition.

by Paul de Revere
Age: 22

Two weeks ago, Emily Haines (best known as the frontwoman for Metric) played a brooding, hopeful show at Washington, D.C.’s 9:30 Club. Currently, I’m writing a short piece about it.

I will recall her ballads: melancholy and piano-driven, accented by moody sound by her band, the Soft Skeleton.

The club’s on V Street. “V as in ‘vampire’,” the club’s phone message says. I find this strange.

Until washed out footage, courtesy of director Guy Maddin (”The Saddest Music in the World”), plays on screen. Bleak images of small children alternate with loops of smoke, water and Nosferatu-like shadows. I see the synchronicity as poignant, ominous.

Vampires still lurk around every corner here. It’s not like this area has been gentrified. Skinny homeless in wool blankets and crack stems hug the curbs and it’s really cold outside. Really cold.

I’m not sure of the warmth here, either.

“I love the 9:30 Club,” Haines says preciously with a leering smile. She’s either being sarcastic or knows something we don’t. It’s confusing.

This is the beginning of a digression, one of many, she indulges between songs. She only has 11 songs from Knives Don’t Have Your Back, her solo debut. Like “Doctor Blind”, about hypocrisy in authority, and “The Lottery”, about how one’s desperation for love is a personal war.

May seem like a downer, but Haines insists otherwise.

“My record is not depressing,” she says before her last song. There’s awkward laughter, a moment of silence. Someone breaks the tension shouting, “It’s inspiring!”

Haines repeats this aloud, slowly, and smiles sincerely.

This time when she smiles, it’s far from confusing. It’s tearfully moving.

Haines announces her last song is a sing-along “for people who cry in the bathtub, where no one can see your tears.”

Somehow, I think these people can relate.