METRIC at the Danforth Music Hall, Thursday, September 24. Rating: NNN
They really should be bigger by now. Of all the bands from Toronto’s breakout indie scene of the early 2000s, Metric were the most meant for the top of the charts. The stadium-sized choruses. The ready-made rock star in frontwoman Emily Haines.
Of course, they are bigger than the Danforth Music Hall – this sold-out gig was a last-minute surprise to celebrate the release of their sixth album, Pagans In Vegas. But despite a full-on light show, fun costume changes (space-age feather headdress! Disco shades! Two different capes!) and 1,500 lucky fans as excited as they were packed in, it didn’t quite have the power-keg vibe of big-band/small-club. It was more like a house party, one that just happened to have a wicked house band.
Gone were Haines’s trademark confrontational rants. The singer/guitarist/keyboardist was in the mood for love, playfully dancing, beaming at the sight of such a community in front of her. Gone, too, was much of guitarist Jimmy Shaw’s presence, with much of the set built instead around the album’s slick synth sounds.
And those new songs should be bigger. But Metric have chosen not to play the radio formula game, still caught between indie and dance music, rock and pop. So a single like The Shade, which in the hands of a big-name producer could be a giant smash, only soars so high. This isn’t failure it’s the band’s intent to go their own way, even in the face of diminishing returns.
Only twice (on Gold Guns Girls from 2009’s Fantasies and new track Celebrate, which closed the set) did the performance truly kick into overdrive – a double-edged pleasure in that it proved just how massive they can be when they want to. When Haines sings, “I want it all, I want it all,” I don’t believe her. If she really did, she would have it. For now, Metric remain synth pop stars of this city, but not yet the world.
