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Metric is a Canadian rock band. Originally formed in 1998 in New York City, they are currently based in Toronto, Ontario.

The band consists of vocalist and keyboardist Emily Haines, guitarist James Shaw, bassist Josh Winstead and drummer Joules Scott-Key. Their first full-length album, Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?, was released in 2003. Their newest album, Live It Out, was released on October 4, 2005 and has been nominated for the 2006 Polaris Music Prize for the Canadian Album of The Year.

Haines and Shaw also perform with Broken Social Scene, and Haines has been a guest on albums by Stars, KC Accidental, and Delerium.

Early history

Born in New Delhi, India, raised in Canada, and with extended family in the United States, Emily Haines grew up as a nomadic dual citizen — foreshadowing her band's own transnational identity. The daughter of avant-garde jazz musician and poet Paul Haines (best known for his lyrical collaboration with Carla Bley in the 1971 jazz opera Escalator Over the Hill), Haines settled in Peterborough, Ontario at the age of 3, and grew up in a milieu rich with experimental art and musical expression. Paul would often make cassettes of rare and eclectic music for his daughter to listen to and her early influences included Carla Bley, Robert Wyatt, and later PJ Harvey. By her teens she followed her parents' footsteps by attending the Etobicoke School of the Arts. There she met Amy Millan and Kevin Drew, with whom she would later collaborate in songs for Stars and Broken Social Scene. Haines and Millan briefly formed their first band around 1990 while at Etobicoke, and with songs later written and recorded while at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in 1992-1993, at Toronto in 1995, and at Concordia University in Montreal in 1995-1996, Haines distributed in 1996 an early effort called Cut In Half and Also Double with a limited number of copies.

Shortly before this, Toronto native James Shaw was a student at a Boston music school and was friends with Torquil Campbell, a vocalist who would later form Stars, and Chris Seligman, the future keyboardist of Stars. Torq had plans to move to New York City and on his suggestion Shaw applied to Julliard Music School and moved to New York with him. After a three-year education at the renowned institution, Shaw had acquired considerable classical training but did not enjoy his stay and knew that his musical interests lay elsewhere. In 1998, Shaw and Torquil returned to Toronto, where Haines met Shaw through mutual friends in the local music scene. They went to a show at the Horseshoe club in Toronto to watch their mutual friends perform, and remarked to each other how much the show sucked. Realizing that they shared very similar tastes in music, Haines joined Shaw to form a musical partnership that brought together the musical projects they had been working on independently. Shaw moved to Montreal where Haines was still living and the two worked on filling out each other's projects. For example, Shaw had an instrumental song built around piano chords and Emily had a completely different song with a vocal line that fit perfectly around the chords. The result was the song "Butcher", and eventually the two of them had completed several other tracks in their home studio (including "The People," "The Battlecry," "The Mandate," "The Lifestyle"). This resulted in what they called Mainstream E.P., a collection of demos with an overall downtempo and electronic feel.

In the fall of 1998, Shaw moved back to New York City, this time accompanied with Haines, Campbell, and Seligman. There they shared a flat in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, which took months to remodel and clean, (and even then, according to Shaw, they had a roommate whose dogs would defecate throughout the house). During their two-year stay at the poorly heated loft, Haines and Shaw were erstwhile roommates with future members of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Liars. In 1999, Shaw and Haines decided to call their partnership "Metric", after a keyboard beat that Shaw used on his sampler and as a reference to the duo's musical precision. Warner Brothers initially showed some interest in the group but decided against signing them on. However, a producer in London saw the potential of commercial success from the demos of Mainstream E.P. and offered to bring Metric to the UK for a possible record deal. Eager to take a break from the somewhat miserable conditions of the loft, Haines and Shaw set off to London in early 2000 and signed a deal with Chrysalis Records. With the help of producer Stephen Hague, an influential figure in the synthpop genre who had produced such '80s acts as Erasure, New Order, and the Pet Shop Boys, Metric worked on a new batch of electropop drum-machine paced songs that would form the nucleus of their debut album. This nucleus formed the basis for an article by Stephen Thanabalan in Rolling Stone magazine, which elucidated on how the band epitomised a nascent direction in indie music that was 'ahead of its time' and sure to be symbolic of an eclectic style that would be prescient for bands in the years ahead with their musical mix - described as "a combination of indietronic, new wave, electropop and dashed with a trifle of trip hop". Although Metric already had a semi-mainstream appeal, they were being pushed in too much of a commercial direction and had no desire to set aside their experimental underground tendencies. Metric also had difficulty breaking into the club scene in London and performed fewer shows than expected (in October 2000 they performed at a Charlotte Road club in London). By November, the record deal had fallen through, and they moved back to United States by the end of the year to take up residence again in their Brooklyn flat.

The Static Anonymity and GUBA Era (2001-2002)

Metric continued to work on their debut album in the first few months of 2001. Now dubbed Grow Up and Blow Away, the effort revealed a more musically-layered and mature sound than the earlier Mainstream E.P. The album under construction included commercial-friendly uptempo songs such as the title track "Grow Up and Blow Away," "Raw Sugar," and "Soft Rock Star" (distinguished by a vaguely Beatlesque melody, high-pitched singing in the chorus, and lyrics evoking middle school angst), downtempo songs like "White Gold," "The Twist," and "Rock Me Now" (which included singing by Shaw, spoken-word vocals by Haines in a manner reminiscent of "The Mandate", and had an overall jazzy vibe). "Parkdale," featuring trumpeting by Shaw and a fanfare intro, concerned the edgy and dynamic Toronto neighborhood. Haines and Shaw completed the album in April and by this time had found a new label for their release — Restless Records, the L.A. indie record company that promoted such acts as They Might Be Giants, Agent Orange, and The Dead Milkmen.

Metric had also gained a new bandmate in the winter of 2001 — Joules Scott-Key, a native of Denton, Texas who was in town with his friend Joshua Winstead (also from Texas) performing in the local music scene. Scott-Key (no relation to Francis Scott Key) and Winstead had known each other for about a decade and they met Haines and Shaw at Brooklyn loft and at local performances. Metric at the time was for the most part a studio band and live shows approximated the keyboard-centered and drum-machine driven sound of the recordings. This made for somewhat restrained and less-than-dynamic performances. The recruitment of a drummer, particularly one of Scott-Key's talents, facilitated a stronger, more engaging live presence. Metric performed in New York quite a bit in early spring and late summer 2001, appearing with such acts as Stars, Tahiti 80, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Metric also performed at the Toronto "Festival of Beer" in August.

Metric received their first national exposure in August 2001 with the television commercial "Be Afraid", advertising Polaroid's I-Zone Pocket Fortune film. The music used for the ad was taken from the song "Grow Up and Blow Away", with the line "Why does it feel so good to die today?" changed to the more benign "Why does it feel so good to fly away?". The film (which added "fortune cookie"-like messages to instant photos) was a flop, but the commercial drew curious music listeners to the Polaroid website to learn of the source of the electro-pop music used in the commercial.

Old World Underground and Live It Out

In 2003, Metric released their first official album Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?. The album was received with mostly positive reviews. The group released 6 singles from the album, the most successful being "Combat Baby". As of December 12, 2005 the album went Gold in Canada.

2 years later, Metric released their second studio album on October 4th, Live It Out. This album, like its predecessor, was well received. During this time, Metric was approached by and agreed to open for the Rolling Stones whose tour coincided with theirs in New York City. Live It Out has been a success in Canada, already selling twice as many copies as Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? and scoring them two top 10 singles for Monster Hospital and Poster Of A Girl. The new single Handshakes is expected to be as successful as the first two singles. The album has gone two times platinum in Canada, selling over 200,000 units.

Discography

EPs

• Mainstream EP (1998)
• Static Anonymity EP (2001)

Singles

Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?

• "Calculation Theme"
• "IOU"
• "Succexy"
• "Combat Baby"
• "Dead Disco"
• "The List"

Live It Out

• "Monster Hospital" UK #55
• "Poster of a Girl"

Albums

• Grow Up and Blow Away (2001) (Never Officially Released)
• Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? (2003)
• Live It Out (2005)

External links

• Official site
• Last.fm page for Metric
• Complete Lyric Database
• Lazy-i Interview: October 2005
• 49music, fansite

• 2000s music groups
• Bands with female lead singers
• Canadian indie rock groups
• Toronto musical groups