Emily Haines and Metric to Play at the Roseland in Portland

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’ve probably heard of Metric. Metric is a Canadian indie band originally from Toronto. The band consists of frontwoman/lead singer Emily Haines, guitarist James Shaw, bassist Josh Winstead and drummer Joules Scott-Key. The band has elected not to sign to a major record label, and instead to manage their professional growth with more control. Their latest album, Fantasies, was released in April 2009 and it has received quite a lot of critical and popular success. Metric’s current single, “Gold Guns Girls,” gets pretty heavy rotation on the radio in Portland, and last autumn so did “Help I’m Alive.”

The songs on Fantasies sound both raw and polished at the same time. The band wrote them over a period of a year and a half. Emily Haines said “most of the songs I brought to [Fantasies] came out of being in exile [in Buenos Aires] with just a piano and a guitar.” “Writing for me comes from a process of trying to piece things together. The function of music in my life is to help me understand what the hell is happening. This new record was about ending the fragmentation of my existence. Everything in the world right now — all the technology, the way we listen to music or watch films — everything has changed so much in my lifetime. People are allowed to have multiple identities — you’re somebody online, you’re somebody else in public — in multiple dimensions, scattered across the world… I wanted to bring all that into one place, one band, one record… I want to be one person.”

As an aside: wouldn’t it be nice to be a rockstar? I personally feel that if I want to be everyone that I truly am, I have to keep the personalities in separate dimensions lest someone from one dimension find out about the Colin in another dimension. Don’t want those worlds colliding… I digress.

After writing the songs on Fantasies, Metric continued to work on them for some time before heading to NYC to make them final. All musicians have their own method of refining their original musical idea—for Fantasies Metric tested the songs by playing them live a lot prior to recording them for the album. According to the band’s website, “the songs went through a lot of surgery, and we really feel like we sculpted them and got the best out of them. I [Emily Haines] felt like I could hear the sound of the whole thing in my head — it was really big and really dreamy.”

Metric played in Portland in late 2009 but I missed it. My friend Madeline told me she “saw them in December and was deaf for two days,” and that the show was awesome. Needless to say, I already bought my tickets for their upcoming show at the Roseland. If you want the details and ticket information, check out my Upcoming Concerts page. Until March 22, here some sweet remixes and an acoustic version of Help I’m Alive.

Monster Hospital (Mstrkrft Remix)

Metric – Gold Guns Girls (Mike Shinoda Remix)

Metric – Help I’m Alive (Acoustic)

If you like Metric, you can download their whole album for $9 here. You can also buy their songs on

Hard to be soft, tough to be tender…