Snapshots: Metric at La Zona

It helps to take a vacation every once in a while, to change your perspective and experience new things. When Metric got home from their disparate musical journeys they obviously had some new perspectives, and set about unleashing them on their new album Fantasies. Emily Haines took some time to record and release a full length and an EP of raw emotions, guitarist James Shaw spent some time on the road with Broken Social Scene expanding his horizons behind dance-pop, and the rhythm section ganged up to form Bang Lime and refine their candy-pop sensibilities. Last night the sold-out crowd at La Zona Rosa ducked the miserable weather to witness the coalescing of all this into Metric's more mature self. The shimmering synths now take a back seat to the crunch of Shaw's road-tested guitar licks and the more vulnerable emotional nuance of Haines' songwriting. The bigger sound washed over the crowd in waves of plaintive, anthemic vocals, "Ooooh Oooh" choruses and serious guitar crunch. Opener "Twilight" was an introduction to a revamped Metric, with Haine's dry vocal austerity letting us know that she's "all right, baby" and she'll take us "anywhere we want". Classics like "Combat Baby" still pulse with dance-rock verve and remind you that behind the more emotionally refined aesthetic of Fantasies there's still a band that wants to have fun and be loved. They just don't want any old kind of love anymore, they want Stadium Love.

Set list after the jump.

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