METRIC

[Martin]

They say there’s no time like the present; what they really mean is there’s no such thing as the present. Five seconds into the future will be five seconds in the past once you finish reading this sentence. Life in the modern world so often boils down to taking comfort in the days of old or praying for some idealized future. Translated into rock ’n’ roll, terms, it means you’re either ahead of your time or past your prime. And we’re cool with that. We like categories and demographics and timelines because they allow us not to think; everything can be explained with the check of a box or a dot on a graph.


EMILY HAINES.JAMES SHAW.Joshua WINSTEAD.JOULES SCOTT-KEY
But Metric don’t let you off that easy. Their measures are decidedly cubist: eternal, multi-layered portraits of instantaneous moments, the luminous blur of street life rendered as a freeze-tableaux, daily rituals portrayed in a fantastical light. This is music born out of sly, considered observation instead of gratuitous introspection — which makes it refreshingly anomalous in an era when so much popular music fudges the line between self-absorption and self-parody.

Through their eight-year creative partnership, singer/synth specialist Emily Haines and guitarist James Shaw have never settled long enough to be defined by any city, scene or style. Their hometown of Toronto made them friends, Montreal turned them into soulmates, London brought them songs, Brooklyn made them a band, L.A. gave them their 2003 debut album, OLD WORLD UNDERGROUND, WHERE ARE YOU NOW?, while a relocation back to Toronto in late 2004 has reconnected Metric with the community of friends (Broken Social Scene, Stars) that inspired them in the first place.

Truth be told, OLD WORLD UNDERGROUND, WHERE ARE YOU NOW? is actually Metric’s second debut album. After moving from Montreal to Brooklyn in 1998, James and Emily formed Metric in their Brooklyn loft. A publishing deal with Chrysalis UK brought Metric to London, where, with the assistance of New Order producer Stephen Hague, they recorded a batch of drum-machine-driven electro-pop songs that would form the basis of an album titled GROW UP AND BLOW AWAY. Upon returning to Brooklyn in 2000, Metric signed a deal with L.A. indie Restless Records, and recruited drummer Joules Scott-Key, who had a serious transformative effect on the band’s sound: electronic experimentation, elaborate studio arrangements and stately stage presence gradually gave way to raw rock catharsis, dancefloor drive and increasingly uninhibited performances.

While waiting for Restless to arrange a release, Metric would make a brief return to Toronto in the winter of 2001, performing club residencies and collaborating with old friends Broken Social Scene on their 2002 critical hit, YOU FORGOT IT IN PEOPLE. However, immediately after a star-making showcase at Toronto’s Canadian Music Week festival in March 2002, Metric packed up the van once more and set out for Los Angeles. Fed up with the delays, the band soon severed ties with Restless. However, instead of trying to salvage an album of two-year-old songs that bore scant resemblance to the band’s current live configuration, Metric scrapped GROW UP AND BLOW AWAY for good and started over from scratch.

Almost immediately, the approach paid off: one of the band’s new demos, the punchy power-popper “Combat Baby,” became an instant staple on Nic Harcourt’s influential KCRW show Morning Becomes Eclectic in the spring of 2002. That summer, the band enlisted bassist Joshua Winstead (an old friend of Joules’) to shore up the rhythm section. By January 2003, Metric had completed an entire new record, OLD WORLD UNDERGROUND, WHERE ARE YOU NOW? in mere weeks. “We banged the record out in 30 days, all live,” Haines says. “You always look back at your work and fuss over it, and we all agreed the fussing over it was kind of missing the point. We just pounded out the new music we wanted to make.” (However, the victory would prove somewhat bittersweet: on the final day of recording, Emily’s father Paul Haines — an acclaimed poet who had collaborated with the likes of Carla Bley, Robert Wyatt and Albert Ayler —passed away suddenly.)

Like all of Metric’s music to date, OLD WORLD UNDERGROUND, WHERE ARE YOU NOW? isn’t so much a summation of influences as experiences. The album’s titular question speaks to old friends in a new city, trying to make sense of a world where war coverage feels like just another contrived reality TV show (“Succexxy”), where class lines are drawn with velvet ropes (“The List”), where propped-up fashion-mag rock stars retrace history’s steps under the delusion that they’re breaking new ground (“Dead Disco”). Stalking the urban catwalks, Haines keeps a detached distance, careful not to be seduced by the stimuli around her; while her voice has an alluringly sweet surface, it betrays the battle scars of disillusionment. Likewise, Shaw’s primal guitar spasms are seduced by a precise, disco-ball-busting rhythm section and swirling synth melodies that encourage Metric to take on their cultural targets with straight-on satire instead of seething contempt. “I think we’re all a little less reclusive than we were before,” Haines says. “I think it’s because the music I’ve always listened to has been the music my friends are making, and then a bunch of my friends started doing well, so I was forced into the broader climate of what’s going on. But I still feel like I’m drawn to the same themes as I’ve always written about — I’m still fucking wandering around.”

That feeling of dislocation would intensify in the months following OLD WORLD UNDERGROUND’s summer 2003 release. While Metric’s music radiates a glamourous sheen, they achieved success through decidedly proletariat means: relentless touring, earning fans one show at a time. But 2004 brought major results: “Combat Baby” and “Dead Disco” became heavily rotated Canadian radio and video hits, while south of the border, Metric sold out nights at New York’s Bowery Ballroom, Los Angeles’ El Ray theatre and San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall, and they would share the stage with old Brooklyn loft-mates the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at Seattle’s massive ENDfest. Metric’s reach extended not just to radios and clubs, but movie screens as well: the band were tipped by acclaimed filmmaker Olivier Assayas for an appearance in his current French box office hit, CLEAN, starring Maggie Cheung and Nick Nolte. (It premiered at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival and will be released in Europe this spring and in the U.S. in the fall.)

But after giving themselves to the world for so many years, Emily and James decided the best way to reenergize themselves was to return to their native Toronto, a city they had spent so much time away from, it practically felt like a new place, ripe with fresh inspiration. Tellingly, the move occurred on Nov. 2, 2004 — i.e., Dubya’s re-election — further reinforcing Metric’s desire for a change of scenery. (Josh and Joules spend their downtime in San Francisco.) James and Emily’s homecoming was marked with four sold-out Metric shows at Toronto’s Mod Club Theatre in January 2005, a heartening indication that, 18 months after its release, OLD WORLD UNDERGROUND was still making new fans. James, meanwhile, spent the winter months assembling a home studio where Metric will record OLD WORLD UNDERGROUND’s follow-up in the coming months; the move back to Toronto also allows Emily and James to make greater contributions to Broken Social Scene’s upcoming album.

Whether Metric decide to make Toronto their permanent home is a mystery, one the band is not too eager to solve, because doing so would mean succumbing to the great enemy of inspiration: premeditation. And while they still yearn for the comforting, enlightened Old World Underground they so romanticize, they’re not sure if it ever truly existed. But the world they’ve built for themselves in their music will most definitely do. For now. “This band,” says Emily, “will always take new shapes.”

[Sandrine-UK]

Heu Martin, tu pourrais expliquer ce qu'est Metric et au moins resumer ce long texte?
Merci :-ms

[phil]

je t'ai connu plus" synthétique" Martin par le passé :-D

[Francois]

Effectivement, attention au copier-coller, surtout en anglais ! C'est un site francophone ici Martin Comme l'indique SanUK, une petite présentation serait la bienvenue et synthétique comme l'ajoute Phil! :roll
Francois

[Martin]

Vous pouvez enlever, je ferai un meilleur résumé.

Désolé.

[Laurent]

C'est pas grave Martin! C'est qui METRIC au fait? Je ne connais pas du tout...

[Martin]

Metric c'est un groupe canadien, plus précisément de Toronto, il est composé de Emily Haines à la voix, de James Shaw à la guitare et aux back vocals, de Josh Winstead à la basse et de Joules Scott-Key à la batterie. Leur premier album appelé OLD WORLD UNDERGROUND est sorti en 2003 au Canada(disque double platine) et il vient à peine de sortir en Europe grâce à la maison Naîve Records. Leur single "Dead disco" a obtenu un prix pour la chanson underground de l'année aux JUNO AWARDS canadiens et cette chanson est demeuré pendant plusieurs semaines dans le top 40 Dance charts sur Billboard. La chanson DEAD DISCO commence à jouer beaucoup en France en ce moment. Musicalement parlant ça ressemble beaucoup à RADIO 4, MOVING UNITS, bref une sorte de mélange entre rock, new wave et disco. Pour ceux qui aimerait écouter quelque titres allez sur ce site www.ilovemetric.com

Dernière petite précision. Peut-être le nom de Metric vous dit quelque chose ? En effet, ils faisaient partie du film "Clean" d'Olivier Assayas sorti en 2004, on leur doit une des plus belles séquences de rock live jamais vues au cinéma (avec le titre Dead Disco) !!

Voilou !!!! C'est mieux hein ?

[Martin]

L'album OLD WORLD UNDERGROUND est dispo à un prix intéressant sur www.amazon.fr ou bien sur www.fnac.com

[phil]

much better man