Austinist Artist Profile: Metric @ The Parish Room

Metric emerged a few years ago from Toronto's thriving indie scene, a fact which in and of itself seems to put a band on most hipster radar screens. To be fair, they're not technically from there - before and after forming in New York City in the late 90s, various members of the quartet floated around parts of Canada and the United States. They've collaborated extensively with Toronto staples Broken Social Scene, kc Accidental, and stars - two of the members are actually part of the BSS collective, after a fashion (sometime in the near future we'll be posting our interview with Kevin Drew of BSS, in which he articulates this point much better than we do).

Moving beyond the "spunk rock" and synthpop of their 2003 release, Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?, they've switched gears slightly and embraced a devilish mix of beautiful melodies, acid-washed vocals, and aggresive guitar riffs on their latest release, the stellar Live It Out. Having only been released last month and since we failed to finagle an advance copy, we've only heard bits and pieces of it, but it's enough to convince us to check 'em out tonight.

We'd also like to point out that these kids are totally fucking gorgeous.

Furthermore, their drummer Joules hails from Denton. As in, Texas.

[Metric on MySpace]
[Metric Official Site]

Members:
Emily Haines - vocals, keyboard
James Shaw - guitar
Joshua Winstead - bass guitar
Joules Scott-Key - drums

Latest Record:
Live It Out, released last month by Last Gang Records

Sounds Like:
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Raveonettes, Sonic Youth, Broken Social Scene, Postal Service We're amending our previous statement and replacing it with Juice's much better description: "Like Letter to Cleo vocals over Enon songs" Although we still think Emily H.'s got the feistiness to rival Karen O.'s

Representative Lyrics:
"Sickness was fixing me some / Coughed out my heart in the last stall / Now that the damage is done / I never miss it at all" - from "Empty"

Artist Quote:
"Anything that happens to you is just your life getting lived. Sometimes it feels like we're afraid of events and action of any kind. But if you can get a little distance from it, it becomes an incredible adventure no matter how things turn out." - Emily Haines

Playing At:
The Parish Room
Thursday, November 10th