Metric "Live It Out"/Emily Haines Solo Era

[oscillations.]

Even though Live It Out is about 18 months old, they still are releasing singles from it. "Empty" came out Feb. 12th in the UK. Emily Haines released her acclaimed Knives Don't Have Your Back in the fall. Both she & the band are touring (she's quite busy at the moment).

The latest news:

02/12/2007
METRIC TO PLAY VFEST 2007 IN VANCOUVER
VFest 2007 - Vancouver, BC
Thunderbird Stadium
May 20-21
www.virginfestival.ca/vancouver
W/ My Chemical Romance, The Killers, Billy Talent, AFI, Rise Against, Hot Hot Heat and More!




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02/05/2007
METRIC TEAM UP WITH PLAYBOY TO FIGHT AIDS
Josh designed a t-shirt to help Playboy fight AIDS. You can see it in the March issue available on Feb. 9. Read all about in last weeks Pitchfork.com story.

xoxoxmetriclovesyou.

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01/26/2007
METRIC - NEW UK DATE ADDED!!!!!
Feb 10th Chalk Club at Scala, Kings Cross, London 10pm-4am. For more details visit: www.drownedinsound.com/articles/1545257
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01/11/2007
METRIC - New single and headline dates (UK)
Metric return to the UK in a few weeks to tour with Bloc Party, but due to demand they've added three extra headline dates for fans in London, Brighton and Oxford.
Metric release their new single 'Empty' on February 12th; it's taken from their critically-celebrated album Live it Out, which is out now via Drowned in Sound Recordings. The single will be available digitally and as a limited-edition 7" backed with a remix of 'The Police And The Private' by Howie B. Metric’s previous single ‘Monster Hospital’ filled many an end of year list and reached number 5 in Mtv2’s tracks of the year.

UK tour dates are now as follows...

January
Sat 27th Guildhall Southampton *
Sun 28th UEA Norwich *
Tue 30th Dingwalls London
Wed 31st Audio Brighton

February
Thu 1st Astoria London *
Sat 3rd Leas Cliff Hall Folkestone *
Sun 4th Zodiac Oxford
Mon 5th Hexagon Reading *
Tue 6th University Cardiff *
Wed 7th Academy Bristol *
Fri 9th Great Hall (Uni) Exeter *
Sat 10th Academy Birmingham *
* = supporting Bloc Party. All BP shows are sold out.




Anyone who says they want a good female fronted rock band & can't find one...check this band out! They are very popular with Garbage & No Doubt fans.

[Callmeatomic]

I love Metric, I saw them live here in Ottawa last summer. Greatness.

I couldn't get into Knives Don't Have Your Back but I never really gave it much of a chance, I'm not a huge fan of her voice in that way. Sounds better with Metric type stuff.

I've always loved 'Parkdale' the most I think.
Monster Hostpital and Poster of a Girl were amazing singles as well.

I'm just not into them right now as I used to be.

I heard she was a big cokehead recently, I can't ever forget that now every time I see/hear her heh.

[oscillations.]

Really?! She's seems way too grounded too get into that s**t. AHH. I hope it's not true.

My friends are cokeheads; I don't want my idols to be the same.
(btw cocaine & heroin are the only drugs I haven't and won't ever try).

[busyboy]

^^^ Words of wisdom about coke and smack...

Metric begin work on new album
Frontwoman Emily Haines reveals details

Metric have revealed that they are currently in the studio recording the follow-up to 2005's 'Live It Out'.

Speaking to NME.COM, frontwoman Emily Haines disclosed that she and guitarist James Shaw along with Sebastian Grainger from Death From Above 1979 have purchased a studio in Toronto, where Metric are recording their new album.

"We just got this amazing space and the first recording and writing sessions for Metric are in there right now," said Haines.

"We've written about 15 songs. We're starting to hone in and choose some of our favourites," she added.

Haines said that the band plan to release the as-yet-untitled album some time next year, and that it has an upbeat, carefree atmosphere.

"It'll be a summer album, regardless of when it's released," she said. "It definitely will have a summer atmosphere."

The band will preview the new material during a handful of Canadian shows scheduled for later this month.

"We're doing a few shows in that'll be strictly new material," Haines said. "We'll play eight new songs and then an encore."

The dates are:

Edmonton, AB Starlite (May 14)
Edmonton, AB Starlite (15, 16)
Calgary, AB Whisky (17)
Victoria, BC Curling Rink (19)

Metric are also slated to perform at Vancouver's Virgin Festival on May 21 and Toronto's Virgin Festival on September 9.

[oscillations.]

Metric's art direction is so fucking cool. Some of the best in the biz, if you ask me. I once based a graphic design project off of the Live It Out CD design scheme.

[Callmeatomic]

I LOVE the empty video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWJQPeIVJIA

[winner2000]

I was so surprised to see a video for "Empty"...I thought they were done with this era after Handshakes...

[oscillations.]

The "Monster Hospital" video is my favorite.

[Damage]

I just heard of metric today. I got to see half the video, but i want to check out the rest of it.

[vinyl]

I always want to buy one of their albums but I never know which one (cause they always put both of them next to each other) and I always end up leaving both of them there.

[M]

"Poster Of A Girl" is a JAM!

[busyboy]

Metric begin work on new album
The foursome are in the studio in Toronto

Metric have begun work on their fourth album, the follow-up to 2006's 'Live It Out'.

The band are currently working on pre-production of the record at Giant Studios in Toronto, having written the majority of the material late last year in Bear Creek Studios, near Seattle.

And singer Emily Haines says the Seattle studio had a major impact on the songs, saying: "Being isolated in the woods at Bear Creek helped to inspire the vibe for these first songs that we wrote together. We went for a warm sound, using a lot of vintage instruments."

The band will continue to write the album until June, when they will officially start recording with a view to completing the album in October.

Meanwhile, Haines is set to release a solo EP in July entitled 'What Is Free To A Good Home?' which contains five songs recorded during the making of her album 'The Knives Don't Have Your Back'.

Additionally, the band have confirmed that their album 'Grow Up And Blow Away' will be officially released on June 26. The album was recorded in 1999 but never released.

The album tracklisting is as follows:

'Grow Up'
'Hardwire'
'Rock Me Now'
'The Twist'
'On The Sly'
'Soft Rock Star'
'Raw Sugar'
'White Gold'
'London Half Life'
'Soft Rock Star' (Jimmy vs Joe Mix)

[davidsask]

Overkill on projects man, lets not all being broken social scene all over the place!

[busyboy]

Metric
Grow Up and Blow Away
[Last Gang; 2007]
Rating: 7.6

Metric are a band of geopolitical extremes. Frontperson Emily Haines was born in India, raised in Canada, and eventually wound up splitting her time between London and Brooklyn, where she and Metric guitarist James Shaw once lived with future members of Liars and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Haines, a vocal critic of consumer society, also licenses her songs to television dramas and Polaroid commercials (a bowdlerized version of the title track from Grow Up and Blow Away was used to promote I-Zone film). In fact, Metric's songs are often characterized by a commercial sheen-- they're smart little packets that, even as anti-consumerism screeds, have a compact luster that makes you feel like getting online to price experimental shelving units from Ikea or browsing all-over print hoodies at H&M.

None of this is to criticize Metric for hypocrisy, it's simply to position them as a band that has no qualms about jockeying for visibility-- in the process amassing reams of the sort of context that can sometimes drown out a band's music. So you might know Metric for any of the reasons above, or from Emily Haines' solo project, Emily Haines and Soft Skeleton, or from her otherworldly vocal turn on Broken Social Scene's beloved "Anthem for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl". And yeah, you might also know them as yet another band in the Broken Social Scene constellation, although they more closely resemble the glossy electro-pop of Stars.

But this album, Metric's lost debut of sorts, gives us a chance to get to know them more intimately-- as a charming singer/songwriterly band poised to arrive a little too late for the 1990s alterna-rock boom, when they would have fit in snugly with bubble-poppers, like Letters to Cleo, and scorers of imaginary films, like Self. While both of Metric's official LPs, 2003's Old World Underground, Where are You Now? and 2005's Live it Out were met with a generally favorable critical reception (the latter was nominated for the Polaris Prize and the Juno), the negative responses often took the band to task for bloat and clutter.

Grow Up and Blow Away was recorded between 1999 and 2001, and was meant to be Metric's debut LP, but it got lost in the shuffle when their label, Reckless Records, was purchased by Rykodisc. The album has been available on the internet for years, but this marks its first hard release, and it showcases Metric as a two-piece, before bassist Josh Winstead and drummer Joules Scott-Key became permanent members. As such, there's less leeway for clutter, and Haines' arresting songwriting (not to mention her fertile rapport with Shaw) shines through. The album is fully a product of Metric's signature style, where electro-pop, trip-hop, and good old indie rock underpin Haines' effortless charisma. Despite its textural richness, it's feather-light; it's also comely and stylish. In fact, Metric's neophyte effort might be their best.

Grow Up and Blow Away's phrasing is redolent of another album that was being recorded around the same time, which also felt like it could have made some mainstream waves had it appeared a few years earlier and shed a few experimental tendencies: Dismemberment Plan's Change. It's stiffly funky, with prickly mechanical drums, supple bass lines, and skittering piano loops as its propulsive grist. Guitars are present, but they take a backseat to the pianos, and when the do appear, they're often deployed so texturally they sound more like guiros. It's structured more like disco than indie rock: simple, striking passages that would be easy to retrofit for an extended mix loop and shuffle. Like Travis Morrison, Haines is more attuned to the stylized melodies of modern r&b than indie rock's more naturalistic, colloquial singing style. She swings with a simple yet elegant dexterity from syllable to bell-clear syllable. This especially comes to the fore on "The Twist", a dreamy r&b synth dirge that sounds like a mannered precursor to Cocorosie's "Werewolf".

Haines' lyrics are also remindful of Morrison's, with their pithy, existential inclinations. The title track, a meditation on suburban ennui set to an ice-blue ribbon of fizzy synths, gives us the first of the album's many modern koans: "If this is the life, why does it feel so good to die today?" (or "fly away," as Polaroid would have it). "Hardwire", sultry and chiming, gives us the skyscraping chorus "You are everything; you are nothing at all." And "Rock Me Now", a spoken-word piece about burning out in Vegas, is almost hard to swallow, but Haines really sells it. Perhaps her confidence stems from having Paul Haines, a poet who often collaborated with jazz muscians, for a father, most notably on Escalator Over the Hill with Carla Bley. But that work was dark and impenetrable in the Scott Walker mold, while "Rock Me Now" is a jazzbo wisp, breezy and trim. It's a manicured lawn to her father's impenetrable weeds. "His value declined when he offered his name," Haines breathes, slipping into a staccato backing harmony as Shaw echoes her in eerie falsetto over a disco churn.

"My old flame broke the 12-bar blues just to prove he could," Haines coos amid the splashy drums and mincing pianos of "On the Sly". "He pays the airline DJs now; he is everywhere," while the kids "get high and eat TV." With evocative lines like these, Haines roughs out the proportions of her subjective world, focusing on whatever details command her attention from her post in its very center. And she doesn't take this subjectivity for granted: "Climb the wall to make the sun rise in time," she sings on "Soft Rock Star" (which appears here in two distinct yet complementary versions). This drive to render the world not as a set of facts, but as a phantasmagorical realm wholly contingent on the presence of a viewer, gives the album its lyrical heft and specific personality. Paired with early Metric's less-is-more approach, it makes for an immersive record that feels much fresher than its long incubation period would seem to warrant.

-Brian Howe, July 03, 2007

[oscillations.]

On tour again!

I'm finally seeing them on Sept. 21st.



Sep 9 2007 12:00A
Virgin Festival - Toronto Island Toronto
Sep 14 2007 8:00P
The Cunard Centre Halifax
Sep 19 2007 8:00A
Trocadero Philadelphia
Sep 20 2007 9:00A
930 Club Washington
Sep 21 2007 8:00A
Webster Hall New York
Sep 22 2007 8:00A
Town Ballroom Buffalo
Sep 23 2007 8:00P
Mr. Small’s Pittsburgh
Sep 24 2007 8:00A
St Andrews Detroit
Sep 25 2007 7:30A
Metro Chicago
Sep 26 2007 9:30A
First Avenue Minneapolis
Sep 28 2007 9:00A
Bluebird Denver
Oct 1 2007 8:00A
Martini Ranch Phoenix
Oct 2 2007 8:00A
Glass House Pamona
Oct 3 2007 8:00A
House of Blues San Diego
Oct 5 2007 9:00A
Fonda Los Angeles
Oct 6 2007 8:00A
Download Festival San Francisco
Oct 8 2007 8:00A
Wonder Portland
Oct 9 2007 9:00A
Showbox Seattle