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Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Wednesday-music.com indie music profile: Metric
Posted by Jason Green on Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 1:52 PM
Metric, the band not the measurement system, formed in Canada in 1999 (the system in France, 1791) and consists of Emily Haines (vocals, synthesizer and guitar), James Shaw (guitars), Josh Winstead (bass) and Joules Scott-Key (drums, no relation to Francis). Emily and James also play with Wednesday-music.com favorite Broken Social Scene. In fact, she met Kevin Drew (BSS) and Amy Millan (Stars and BSS) in high school.
Soon after graduating, Emily moved to Canada, became acquainted with James, and the two eventually re-located to Brooklyn. While there, they roomed with future members of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Liars and TV On The Radio. According to James, "although this sounded like an amazing place to live, often the roommates were simply struggling to eat."
You may know their songs "Monster Hospital," "Gold Guns Girls," "Police and the Private" or "Front Row" from TV shows like Grey's Anatomy, CSI: Miami, Gossip Girl or Zombieland. That’s not how I know them because I don’t watch any of that tripe (not that I’m a TV snob, and not that there's anything wrong with being a TV snob). Rolling Stone recently announced that Metric's song, "Black Sheep," will be included in the soundtrack of Michael Cera's latest film vehicle, the upcoming Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.
If you can’t get enough of Emily’s haunting vocals, she also performs as Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton, which is more poignant and minimalist (usually only piano and vocals) than Metric or Broken Social Scene. Side story provided by NPR: while performing a live version of "Doctor Blind," from her solo album Knives Don't Have Your Back, Emily stopped mid-song and said to the audience, "I don't want to play these anymore." She finished the set playing more upbeat metric songs.
Click here for a June 08, 2009 live set and interview recorded by KCRW for Morning Becomes Eclectic. Click here for a June 18, 2009 9:30 Club gig recorded by NPR’s All Songs Considered. Click here for a bunch of Metric songs hosted on CBC’s website. Click here and here for a couple of interviews. Visit the band’s myspace page here and website here.
Check here to see if Metric have any gigs scheduled near you.
As always, whenever possible, please buy your music from your local independent music store by people who know and love music and not from retailers like Wal-Mart (soulless, globally-homogenizing, community-killers) or i-Tunes (albums should be listened to as an entire composition with album cover and liner notes in hand). Incidentally, these two companies sell more music than any other retailer in the United States. That my friend, bites.
Metric rock.
If you agree, please visit wednesday-music.com! Then, join the once weekly (on Wednesday) mailing list or better yet, join the pep squad and get tons of free junk (actually, just wednesday-music stickers and pencils- but really great stickers and pencils).
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