Metric's 2003 debut, OLD WORLD UNDERGROUND, WHERE ARE YOU NOW?, was a statement of both resignation and resurrection: when the underground you once romanticized has given way to pre-fab Rebellion™, grab a shovel and start digging your own subterranean sanctuary. But spend enough time down and out of sight and you start feeling the need to come up for air. And when Metric did just that after a year of ceaseless, club-by-club conversions, they were confronted with a strangely beautiful sight: a crowd of people looking right back at them. The very fashionistas and consumerists they slyly satirized in songs like "Dead Disco," "Combat Baby" and "The List" were singing along with them. And it felt good.
That's the funny thing about the never-ending battle between pop and art - the goalposts keep changing. And for Metric's Emily Haines (vocals/synths), Jimmy Shaw (guitar), Josh Winstead (bass) and Joules Scott-Key (drums), the most exciting thing is being able to play for both sides. Over the course of 2004-05, Metric were everywhere, from MTV and commercial rock radio to French art-house cinemas (the band made a show-stopping cameo in Oliver Assayas' 2004 junkie drama CLEAN); depending on the night, you could find Emily playing sombre solo piano shows in churches, or diving off the stage at Toronto's Mod Club Theatre, where Metric played an unprecedented four sold-out nights in a row in January '05. This is a band comfortable making music for both the misfits as the masses.
"I get freaked out by numbers, and the idea that if your audience grows, suddenly it's going to be a bunch of frat boys," Emily admits. "But more and more I just feel like those judgments about types of people and their musical tastes are ringing untrue to me. There are lot of people who would love to listen to Feist in the morning and Death from Above on a Friday night. People don't like music according to a type."
After spending much of the past two years in the company of strangers across North America, Europe and Japan, Metric retreated back to the comfort of friends and family. Since Jimmy and Emily first began collaborating seven years ago, their list of hometowns has become almost as well-known as their repertoire (for those following along at home: Toronto, Montreal, London, Brooklyn, Toronto again, and then Los Angeles for the recording of OLD WORLD UNDERGROUND). But by the end of 2004, Metric realized that everything they were searching for could be found in their original home base of Toronto: a wellspring of moral support (most notably from their childhood friends in Broken Social Scene and Stars), a culturally inspiring community and, of course, affordable rent.
This last factor was particularly conducive to the creation of the band's second LP, LIVE IT OUT. As luck would have it, the cheap east-end loft space that the band inhabited during their previous Toronto stay (in 2001-02) became available upon Jimmy and Emily's return to the city in autumn 2004. (Joules and Josh both retained residency in Oakland but made frequent visits.) Located on the second floor of a bank, the space features a series of old inter-connected office rooms that James reckoned could be converted into a home studio, where the band could regularly convene and work out ideas without the pressure of watching the clock - and without the interference of an outside producer.
"I was a little scared," Jimmy says. "I felt like I took on a lot. You approach the record company and say, 'You've got to let me do this on my own, and I need to call all the shots and do everything myself and everyone needs to trust me,' and they say, 'OK!' And then you're like, 'Oh shit, what if I fuck this up?' It's really terrifying. I'm just glad I didn't fuck it up."
"We had no idea if it was going to work," Emily says. "The studio was a makeshift job of covering insulation with fabric from Goodwill, not even knowing if it was going to sound good. We recorded throughout the winter and with the heat on, it was so boiling hot in there that everyone was shirtless, and then in the summer, it was incredibly boiling hot. We really went through all the seasons, which is a big reason I'm really glad we made the record in Canada. I feel like those moods are really reflected."
No more so than on the striking, six-minute introduction "Empty," which Jimmy and Emily point to as a breakthrough song for the band, one that showed them a path beyond OLD WORLD UNDERGROND'S new-wave formalism.
Says Emily, "Jimmy had written the guitar part and I wrote the vocals on the big red couch in [Broken Social Scenester] Kevin Drew's living room, which I kinda like. I feel like in light of all the changes that have happened in everyone's life, that was the place where it needed to start.
Like many songs on the new album, "Empty" bears the unmistakable mark of Sonic Youth's 1990 masterwork GOO (Metric recently met their indie-rock ancestors at an Oliver Assayas-directed music festival in France) and highlights LIVE IT OUT's most intriguing developments: Jimmy's increasingly unhinged guitar playing, Emily's mercurial vocals (ghostly one minute, electrifying the next) and Josh and Joules' intuitive rhythmic interplay. The song simmers with a creeping tension that explodes without warning and dissolves into the ether - and heralds the arrival of a new, more fearless Metric.
Emily cops to another key, less obvious influence. "I was thinking about Pink Floyd a lot on this record," she says, and while fans can rest assured that LIVE IT OUT contains no 20-minute space-rock jams, the French pillow talk whispered throughout the neon disco haze of "Poster of a Girl" betrays a debt to the subliminal conversations that permeate DARK SIDE OF THE MOON. (And not coincidentally, like Pink Floyd and Sonic Youth, Metric are a band borne out of underground ideals that were gradually absorbed into the mainstream.) Road-tested favorites like "Monster Hospital," "Patriarch on a Vespa" and "Handshakes" relate more closely to OLD WORLD UNDERGROUND's spunk-rock swagger though are even more fierce in their delivery, with Emily's vocals so in-your-face, they leave bite marks.
But a remarkable thing happens on the road from the album's ominous opening salvo - "When there's no way out / The only way out is to give in"- to the triumphant climactic chords of the title track: cynicism has turned to celebration, hopelessness to happiness.
"It's all just the idea of 'don't freak out,'" Emily explains. "Anything that happens to you is just your life getting lived. Sometimes it feels like we're afraid of events and action of any kind. But if you can get a little distance from it, it becomes an incredible adventure no matter how things turn out."
From Lastfm:Metric is a Canadian indie rock band, formed in Toronto in 1998 and based at various times in Montreal, London, New York City and Los Angeles. The band members are Emily Haines (vocals, keyboards), James Shaw (guitar), Josh Winstead (bass) and Joules Scott-Key (drums). They have embraced an eclectic and adventurous outlook, the group's music encompasses elements of indie rock, new wave, and dance music. Metric have released four albums to date Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?, Live It Out, Grow Up And Blow Away and Fantasies.
Emily Haines and artist]James Shaw[also perform with Broken Social Scene, and Emily Haines has been a guest on albums by Stars, The Crystal Method, kc accidental, Delerium, The Stills, and Jason Collett. Joules Scott-Key[ and Josh Winstead have their own side project, bang lime, and Emily Haines has released two solo albums under the name Emily Haines & the Soft Skeleton.
Their songs "Monster Hospital", "Police And The Private", "Blindness" and "Front Row" have been used on the television show Grey's Anatomy. "Monster Hospital" has also been used in CSI: Miami and "Gold Gun Girls" has been used on Gossip Girl, Zombieland and Entourage. Gossip Girl also featured "Gimme Sympathy" in the same episode.
Metric's latest album, Fantasies, was released in 2009. This album has been shortlisted for the 2009 Polaris Music Prize.
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From Wikipedia:Metric is a Canadian indie rock and New Wave band. Originally formed in Toronto, the band has also, at various times been based in Montreal, London, New York City and Los Angeles.
The band consists of vocalist Emily Haines (who also plays the synthesizer and guitar), guitarist James Shaw (who also plays the theremin), bassist Josh Winstead and drummer Joules Scott-Key. Their first full-length album, Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?, was released in 2003 and earned a Juno Award nomination for Best Alternative Album. Live It Out was released on October 4, 2005 and was nominated for the 2006 Polaris Music Prize for the Canadian Album of The Year and once again the Juno Award nomination for Best Alternative Album.
The first album the band recorded, Grow Up and Blow Away, was finally released on June 26, 2007 by Last Gang Records. The album was originally recorded for Restless Records, but got neglected when the label was bought out by Rykodisc.
Haines and Shaw also perform with Broken Social Scene, and Haines has been a guest on albums by Stars, KC Accidental, The Stills, Jason Collett and Tiësto. Scott-Key and Winstead have their own side project, Bang Lime, and Haines has released a solo album and companion EP, Knives Don't Have Your Back and What Is Free to a Good Home?, respectively, under the name Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton.
Their fourth studio album Fantasies (previously scheduled for an April 14 release) was released in Canada and the United States on April 7, 2009. It was shortlisted for the 2009 Polaris Music Prize for Canadian Album of the Year, and won the Alternative Album of the Year at the 2010 Juno Awards, as well as Group of the Year.