Metric. I'm a fan!
I saw Metric on Tuesday night and just wanted to say a couple things about the show.
First of all, if they're coming to your town, or near your town, GO SEE THEM! For serious. If you're on the fence about seeing them, GO SEE THEM! They put on a terrific show.
They came out after the horrid opener Band of Skulls (prediction! "Skulls" are the new "Wolf" for hipster bullshit bands) and were faced with an audience of a few hundred sleepy Milwaukeeans. After bashing through their first two songs (Twilight Galaxy, a strange choice for first song, I thought, and Help I'm Alive, which came off oddly flat live) and being greeted with slightly nodding heads and shuffling feet, Emily Haines apparently decided she wasn't having it, and turned everything up about five notches. She's already a great frontwoman, but she lit it up big time for the rest of the night, single-handedly turning what could have been a quality, if rote, rock show into an inspiring mid-week party. Her onstage movements reminded me a lot of one of the dancers from the Around The World video, in the best way possible. She also stopped at a couple points during the set to muse about how "there's a lot of extra stuff you have to sign up for, when all you want to do is play music for people, and really most of it is bullshit" and wax poetic about how she thought the state of music with regards to all the incredible bands we have to listen to these days was really pretty amazing, a sentiment I agree with wholeheartedly.
I also really appreciated their "play everything ourselves" aesthetic. There were a couple triggered samples, but most everything was played by someone in the band. They had a half-theremin onstage and everyone had some kind of analog synth by their mic. I wished nulldevice was with me 'cos that guy can correctly identify any synth at 50 paces, but I do know that one of Emily's keyboards was a Sequential Circuits Pro-One, and it sounded fucking awesome. The bassist and guitarist covered the harmonies and while not totally solid all the time, they acquitted themselves manfully, I thought.
So overall it was a really great show. Lots of energy, lots of solid musicianship and aside from the first two, some really choice song selections. Definitely worth seeing.
First of all, if they're coming to your town, or near your town, GO SEE THEM! For serious. If you're on the fence about seeing them, GO SEE THEM! They put on a terrific show.
They came out after the horrid opener Band of Skulls (prediction! "Skulls" are the new "Wolf" for hipster bullshit bands) and were faced with an audience of a few hundred sleepy Milwaukeeans. After bashing through their first two songs (Twilight Galaxy, a strange choice for first song, I thought, and Help I'm Alive, which came off oddly flat live) and being greeted with slightly nodding heads and shuffling feet, Emily Haines apparently decided she wasn't having it, and turned everything up about five notches. She's already a great frontwoman, but she lit it up big time for the rest of the night, single-handedly turning what could have been a quality, if rote, rock show into an inspiring mid-week party. Her onstage movements reminded me a lot of one of the dancers from the Around The World video, in the best way possible. She also stopped at a couple points during the set to muse about how "there's a lot of extra stuff you have to sign up for, when all you want to do is play music for people, and really most of it is bullshit" and wax poetic about how she thought the state of music with regards to all the incredible bands we have to listen to these days was really pretty amazing, a sentiment I agree with wholeheartedly.
I also really appreciated their "play everything ourselves" aesthetic. There were a couple triggered samples, but most everything was played by someone in the band. They had a half-theremin onstage and everyone had some kind of analog synth by their mic. I wished nulldevice was with me 'cos that guy can correctly identify any synth at 50 paces, but I do know that one of Emily's keyboards was a Sequential Circuits Pro-One, and it sounded fucking awesome. The bassist and guitarist covered the harmonies and while not totally solid all the time, they acquitted themselves manfully, I thought.
So overall it was a really great show. Lots of energy, lots of solid musicianship and aside from the first two, some really choice song selections. Definitely worth seeing.