Metric (band)

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Metric

Background information
Origin New York City, USA
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Genre(s)
Indie rock
Indie pop
New Wave
Years active 1998–present
Label(s) Last Gang Records
Drowned in Sound
Website Official website
Members
Emily Haines
Joules Scott-Key
James Shaw
Josh Winstead

Metric is a Canadian indie rock band. Originally formed in 1998 in New York City, they are currently based in Toronto, Ontario.

The band consists of vocalist Emily Haines (who also plays the synthesizer), guitarist James Shaw, bassist Josh Winstead and drummer Joules Scott-Key. Their first full-length album, Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?, was released in 2003. 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 as well as earning the Juno Award nomination for Best Alternative Album.

Their newest album Grow Up and Blow Away was released on June 26, 2007 under record label Last Gang Records. Mostly comprised of songs previously recorded, Metric re-worked their early songs to create a new CD almost a decade later.

Haines and Shaw also perform with Broken Social Scene, and Haines has been a guest on albums by Stars, KC Accidental, Delerium, The Stills, and Jason Collett. Scott-Key and Winstead have their own side project, Bang Lime, and Haines has released a solo album under the name Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton.

Their songs "Monster Hospital" and "Police and the Private" have been used on the television show Grey's Anatomy. "Monster Hospital" has also been used in CSI: Miami.

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Early history

Born in North Bay, Ontario, Canada, raised in New Delhi, India and with extended family in the United States, Emily Haines grew up as a dual citizen. The daughter of avant-garde jazz musician and poet Paul Haines (best known for his lyrical collaboration with Carla Bley in the 1971 jazz opera Escalator over the Hill), Haines settled in New Delhi at the age of 3. Paul would often make cassettes of rare and eclectic music for his daughter to listen to and her early influences included Carla Bley, Robert Wyatt, and later PJ Harvey. By her teens she followed her parents' footsteps by attending the Etobicoke School of the Arts. There she met Amy Millan and Kevin Drew, with whom she would later collaborate in songs for Stars and Broken Social Scene. Haines and Millan briefly formed their first band around 1990 while at Etobicoke, and with songs later written and recorded while at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in 1992-1993, at Toronto in 1995, and at Concordia University in Montreal in 1995-1996, Haines distributed in 1996 an early effort called Cut in Half and Also Double with a limited number of copies.

Shortly before this, Toronto native James Shaw was a student at a Boston music school and was friends with Torquil Campbell, a vocalist who would later form Stars, and Chris Seligman, the future synthesizer player of Stars. Torq had plans to move to New York City and on his suggestion Shaw applied to Juilliard Music School and moved to New York with him. After a three-year education at the institution, Shaw had acquired considerable classical training but did not enjoy his stay and knew that his musical interests lay elsewhere. In 1998, Shaw and Torquil returned to Toronto, where Haines met Shaw through mutual friends in the local music scene. Shaw moved to Montreal where Haines was still living and the two worked on filling out each other's projects. For example, Shaw had an instrumental song built around piano chords and Emily had a completely different song with a vocal line that fit perfectly around the chords. The result was the song "Butcher", and eventually the two of them had completed several other tracks in their home studio (including "The People", "The Battlecry", "The Mandate", "The Lifestyle"). This resulted in what they called Mainstream E.P., a collection of demos with an overall downtempo and electronic feel.

In the fall of 1998, Shaw moved back to New York City, this time accompanied with Haines, Campbell, and Seligman. There they shared a flat in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. During their two-year stay at the loft, Haines and Shaw were erstwhile roommates with future members of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Liars. In 1999, Shaw and Haines decided to call their partnership "Metric", after a synthesizer beat that Shaw used on his sampler and as a reference to the duo's musical precision. Warner Bros. Records initially showed some interest in the group but decided against signing them. However, a producer in London saw the potential of commercial success from the demos of Mainstream E.P. and offered to bring Metric to the UK for a possible record deal. Eager to take a break from the somewhat miserable conditions of the loft, Haines and Shaw set off to London in early 2000 and signed a deal with Chrysalis Records. With the help of producer Stephen Hague, an influential figure in the synthpop/New Wave genre(s) who had produced such '80s acts as Erasure, New Order, and the Pet Shop Boys, Metric worked on a new batch of New Wave/electropop drum-machine paced songs that would form the nucleus of their debut album. This nucleus formed the basis for an eclectic style that would be prescient for bands in the years ahead with their musical mix - described as "a combination of new wave, electropop and dashed with a trifle of trip hop". Although Metric already had a semi-mainstream appeal, they were being pushed in too much of a commercial direction and had no desire to set aside their experimental underground tendencies. Metric also had difficulty breaking into the club scene in London and performed fewer shows than expected (in October 2000 they performed at a Charlotte Road club in London). By November, the record deal had fallen through, and they moved back to United States by the end of the year to take up residence again in their Brooklyn flat.

[edit] The Static Anonymity and GUBA Era (2001-2002)

Metric continued to work on their debut album in the first few months of 2001. Now dubbed Grow Up and Blow Away, the effort revealed a more musically-layered and mature sound than the earlier Mainstream E.P. The album under construction included commercial-friendly uptempo songs such as the title track "Grow Up and Blow Away", "Raw Sugar", and "Soft Rock Star" (distinguished by a vaguely Beatlesque melody, high-pitched singing in the chorus, and lyrics evoking middle school angst), downtempo songs like "White Gold", "The Twist", and "Rock Me Now" (which included singing by Shaw, spoken-word vocals by Haines in a manner reminiscent of "The Mandate", and had an overall jazzy vibe). "Parkdale", featuring trumpeting by Shaw and a fanfare intro, concerned the edgy and dynamic Toronto neighborhood. Haines and Shaw completed the album in April and by this time had found a new label for their release -- Restless Records -- the L.A. indie record company that promoted such acts as They Might Be Giants, Agent Orange, and The Dead Milkmen.

Metric had also gained a new bandmate in the winter of 2001 -- Joules Scott-Key -- a native of Flint, Michigan who was attending college in Texas and was in town with his friend Joshua Winstead (also from Texas) performing in the local music scene. Scott-Key (no relation to Francis Scott Key) and Winstead had known each other for about a decade and they met Haines and Shaw at Brooklyn loft and at local performances. Metric at the time was for the most part a studio band and live shows approximated the Synthesizer-centered and drum-machine driven sound of the recordings. This made for somewhat restrained and less-than-dynamic performances. The recruitment of a drummer, particularly one of Scott-Key's talents, facilitated a stronger, more engaging live presence. Metric performed in New York quite a bit in early spring and late summer 2001, appearing with such acts as Stars, Tahiti 80, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Metric also performed at the Toronto "Festival of Beer" in August.

Metric received their first national exposure in August 2001 with the television commercial "Be Afraid", advertising Polaroid's I-Zone Pocket Fortune film. The music used for the ad was taken from the song "Grow Up and Blow Away", with the line "Why does it feel so good to die today?" changed to the more benign "Why does it feel so good to fly away?". The film (which added "fortune cookie"-like messages to instant photos) was a flop, but the commercial drew curious music listeners to the Polaroid website to learn of the source of the Synth-pop music used in the commercial.

Recently an unknown 2002 single promo remix of Grow Up and Blow away surfaced.[citation needed] No other copy has surfaced before or after. The sound recording copyright(UK style with a P inside of a circle) is attributed to Restless Records which had been acquired by Rykodisc in 2001. This would indicate that the band and or label were still attempting to get the album released. The validity of this remix promo can be assured through the typed write-up on a see through plastic vinyl cover which refers to only Shaw and Haines as members of Metric but finishes off with the line "More to come." This same line appears at the end of a write up on (Metric's site circa 2002)and would appear to be linked to the same writers style.

[edit] Old World Underground and Live It Out

In 2003, Metric released their first official album Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?. The album was received with mostly positive reviews. The group released six singles from the album, the most successful being "Combat Baby", which was featured as a free single on iTunes in 2004. As of December 12, 2005 the album went gold in Canada.

Metric was featured as themselves in the 2004 independent film, Clean.

Two years later, Metric released their second studio album on October 4, Live It Out. This album, like its predecessor, was well received. During this time, Metric was approached by and agreed to open for the Rolling Stones whose tour coincided with theirs in New York City. Live It Out has been a success in Canada, already selling twice as many copies as Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? and scoring them three top 20 singles for "Monster Hospital", "Poster of a Girl" and "Hand$hake$". The album has gone two times platinum in Canada, selling over 200,000 units. In the UK, all three of the singles have been used in the soundtrack to the TV series Hollyoaks, The band used a UK-wide tour supporting Bloc Party to promote Live it Out.

[edit] Present

Information about the currently untitled album is scarce but Haines has stated that she “... can see that we're all feeling more experimental on this record, and imaginative."[citation needed] The band has played a few of the new songs live but says that some are incomplete. Haines said that there will be a tribute to Freddie Mercury, either going by the name "Black Sheep" or "Freddy Mercury", containing the lyrics "black sheep, come home, black sheep, come home '" the "black sheep" sung by Emily and the "come home" sung by the Josh who also now plays a bit of keys on the album bringing all three of them to play some sort of keyboard. At the Vancouver Virgin Music Festival, Emily had the following to say after playing a new track: "That one was called Up In Flames...we may call name the new album that". There is quite a bit of alternation in singing throughout a few of the songs at least. It was recently announced that Metric would play during Orientation Week at Queen's University, Brock University, University of Guelph, McMaster University, Niagara College and McGill University this coming term. Interestingly, Metric did not play at the more well renowned McGill University, instead playing at Concordia University where Haines stated that she was in fact Concordia Alumni.

On June 26, 2007, Last Gang Records released Metric's 1999 album Grow up and Blow Away.

On October 4, 2007, Metric played a live webcasted show on MySpace.com's "Hey Play This" program. Fans sent in requests and the band played a selected few. Along with old material, they performed some new songs. New songs include "Freddie" (aka: "Black Sheep"), "Standing in Line", "Give Me Sympathy" (aka: "The Hooks"), "Twilight", "Joyride" and "Stadium Love."

On November 13, 2007 Last Gang Records released a trailer on YouTube for an upcoming Metric DVD showcasing a live concert at the Metropolis building in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, as well as all three music videos from Live It Out. The DVD was released on February 12, 2008. A 3-track audio EP was released on iTunes in December. The EP features the live tracks "The Police and the Private," "Too Little Too Late," and "Patriarch On a Vespa" from the DVD, as well as the DVD trailer.

The band is "taking a break" from the recording of their upcoming fourth album and have added several shows to their tour, including venues in British Columbia, and Mexico. The band performed at the 2008 Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California on April 27th, 2008, and at the 2008 Pemberton Festival in Pemberton, British Columbia.[1]

It is currently unknown when the untitled fourth album from the band will be released.

[edit] Discography

[edit] Albums

[edit] EPs

[edit] DVDs

  • Live At Metropolis (2008)

[edit] Singles

Grow Up And Blow Away (recorded in 2001/released in 2007)

  • Grow Up And Blow Away (UK remix promo cd)
  • Raw Sugar (promo)

Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?

  • Combat Baby
  • Succexy (promo)
  • Dead Disco (promo) (Top 10 on Edge 102 Toronto)

Live It Out

[edit] External links