Dancing About Architecture, Vol. VI

October 25, 2005

Tonight’s Episode: Metric

October 25, 2005 at The Casbah, San Diego, CA

I love New Wave! I LOVE New Wave! I’ve always loved New Wave. And you all mocked me and poked me with forks and called me “dorkus” and “moleface” and “new wave lover”. But who’s mocking now, hmn? If it hadn’t been for New Wave, we would still be rockin’ out to Styx and Genesis. And we wouldn’t have Metric.

Now here’s a band that is taking us where we need to go. Did I not say that Metric would fucking ROCK?! I believe I said that. And damn, I was spot on this time, yesSIR! They came to San Diego just as I was getting up on them, so it’s fair to admit that I was inclined to like the show. It would also be fair to say that I tend to go see bands I know something about and expect to like, so it’s likely that I should write a favorable review. Nonetheless, there’s good, and then there’s something even better. This show was, like, better.

Jackie and I met Art and Vera at the Casbah just after the second opening act, which A & V said were actually pretty good. The Lovely Simpletons or some such. Chris and Suzanne miraculously made it coming straight from the airport, so we had our own little IloveMetric micro-posse. The band walked on stage and made an instant impression just by their look: guitarist Jimmy Shaw and bassist Joshua Winstead in sharp shirt and tie (the latter sporting a tote cap), drummer Joules Scott Key in t-shirt and jeans, and singer/keyboardist/lyricist Emily Haines in a fitted black dress. This is a look which says, ‘we are punk but we are also more than that.’ What is so fetching about this band is that everything about them says they’re trying to tell us something about us, which sounds bad but really isn’t so bad because we all kind of knew that stuff already but couldn’t quite codify it. ‘Cept they don’t overdo it and get all pretentious on us. The lyrics seem so despondent at first, but the more you wrap yourself up in them, the more comforting they get. The band began with “Empty”, the first song off their new sophomore album. I guess starting the show with the first song off the album you’re promoting isn’t so unusual after all. So she started singing, “There’s no way out/the only way out is to give in”. And I felt sad. And happy. Because there was this woman who looks exactly like Uma Thurman except of normal height and only slightly less-than-normal weight, replete with “Kill Bill” haircut and serious eyes, holding the microphone stand out to us at arms length and shaking her head fiercely back and forth in time with the beat, telling us how life is rough. And when we heard “Poster Of A Girl”, we understood perfectly well that even if you’re a young, thin, attractive, smart, talented blonde middle class woman from a wealthy country, it can still be hard to find your place in the world. And I thought, this must have been what it was like to see Blondie at CBGB’s.

Yeah. ‘cause here was this smart woman fronting a band of regular guys, using her striking looks not to promote any sexual politics but to affect a performing style that grabs our attention and keeps it suspended until she’s said what she wants to say. She was all over the stage, throwing out her free arm with splayed fingers, or leaning as far out over the sold-out crowd as possible, or casually resting against a pole in the back corner. At times she climbed down to the floor and sang in the middle of the front row, and Winstead followed suit. Shaw is a confident guitarist, who on one particular song was strumming chords so fast and for so long that his entire body shook like it was being electrocuted. They weren’t just playing their songs and taking our cover charge. This is a band in the sweet spot of their ascendancy, when word-of-mouth has made them underground stars, and they clearly are relishing the moment. Haines spent song breaks in chat mode with the audience (it’s an intimate club anyway), and whether or not it was affected, they obviously appreciate the attention they’re getting, particularly in lame towns like this one.

Shaw and Haines also played synthesizer keyboards…which brings us back to new wave. Metric’s first album was solid, formalized new wave, and it’s a lovely and thoughtful album. This new one, though, is a delicious mix of the ol’ N.W. with some punk and alterno-rockin’. Of course, that’s when new wave is at its best. There’s the story of the Seymour Stein, the legendary head of Sire Records, marketing The Ramones as new wave because the term “punk” had a bad rap. Anyhooch, this stuff is captivating on the record and was even more so on the stage. The keyboards, voice and synth weave in and out of the melody so craftily you’re never exactly sure what’s coming next. Haines has said she was thinking a lot of Pink Floyd while they were making this record. Makes sense: there are some moments of quiet, pulsating sound that suddenly explode with power chords, in a spacey sorta way. I even heard that four note bit that comes out of nowhere in “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” in there somewhere. But unlike the Floyd, there’s no lassitude here. There was a sweet moment toward the end of the show when they were expanding on the coda and slowly brought the sound down to a tense murmur, with synth bleeps and guitar whimpering, and held it there, just long enough. Then it started rising again, with each band member slowly swirling sound upward until it finally blew the roof off. There’s the adage for musicians which says if your audience is losing interest, play softly. These kids knew what they were doing, because by the end, they had us in the palms of their hands. In the end, the live show took us from the low-grade depression we thought the songs were about, to the real message as expressed in the album title itself: Live It Out.

So buy the record. See the show. Take out a ruler or graduated cylinder and measure something in any country but the U.S., because “British base-12 system” is a stupid, stupid name for a band. Crikey, the bloody Brits don’t even use it any more.