Metric sera en concert au festival Rock en Seine le 30 août.
METRIC REJOINT LA STRUCTURE ‘INTEGRAL’ POUR LA SORTIE DE LEUR NOUVEL ALBUM
Le 20 avril 2009, le quatrième album studio de METRIC, Fantasies, sera disponible en France et en Europe via Intégral. A partir du 2 mars 2009, les fans pourront pré-acheter le disque directement sur le site Internet du groupe sous la forme d’un vinyle en édition limitée, d’un CD en version deluxe ou d’un téléchargement numérique. En outre, tous ceux qui commanderont l’un de ces trois formats recevront immédiatement un MP3 gratuit du premier titre de l’album, “Help I’m Alive”, ainsi que des titres bonus en exclusivité. METRIC a mis un point d’honneur à prendre son temps pour écrire Fantasies et beaucoup de chansons ont été testées sur la route entre les séances d’enregistrement. Selon le guitariste, Jimmy Shaw: “Nous avons laissé ce disque nous dicter son propre processus de fabrication. Quelle que soit la façon dont ça devait se passer, c’est ainsi que ça se passait, ce qui ne nous posait aucun problème. Pendant tout ce temps, j’entendais dans ma tête le son que je recherchais — énorme et doux, rêveur." La surface dorée et la densité de texture de l’album, produit par Gavin Brown, co-produit par Jimmy Shaw et mixé par leur ami et collaborateur de longue date, nommé aux Grammy Awards, John O’Mahony (Coldplay, The Strokes) — un mélange de psychédélisme, d’electro et de rock — incarnent la vision “d’état de rêve” de Shaw. Le groupe est emballé à l’idée d’explorer de nouvelles façons de proposer sa musique à ses fans dans le monde entier et espère à cet égard contribuer à un nouvel esprit d’innovation dans l’industrie musicale. "Quand nous nous sommes libérés de notre contrat d’enregistrement, nous avons rencontré tous les acteurs habituels, les majors et les gros labels indépendants," explique la chanteuse de METRIC, Emily Haines. "C’était étrange d’avoir de vraies possibilités de choix pour la première fois de notre carrière, tout en sentant aussi que quel que soit le contrat que nous choisirions, il finirait par nous restreindre et nous forcer à nous compromettre d’un point de vue créatif. A un moment, nous nous sommes dit, ‘oh ! et puis merde, faisons un pari’, nous avons pris une profonde inspiration et décidé de sortir ce disque dans le monde entier nous-mêmes." Bien qu’il reste à voir ce que vont donner pour METRIC ces plans de sortie mondiale, pour l’instant, les premiers signes sont bons. En décembre 2008, trois ans après son dernier album, le groupe a terminé la plus grande tournée canadienne de sa carrière, effectuée à guichets fermés. En chemin, il a récolté près de 150 000 dollars pour des organisations caritatives comme Covenant House & the Children’s Emergency Fund, pour aider la jeunesse canadienne en détresse. De façon inattendue, le single vinyle de “Help I’m Alive”, pressé pour coïncider avec cette tournée, a été distribué par les fabricants étrangers et a obtenu un nombre considérable de passages radio partout dans le monde. “C’est dingue", dit Shaw. “Une chanson comme "Help I'm Alive" n’a rien d’un single commercial conventionnel mais elle s’est mise à avoir une vie bien à elle, et à se développer de façon organique, dans tous ces pays différents. Et maintenant, nous essayons simplement de suivre”. La chanson est devenue le plus grand hit radio du groupe depuis ses débuts, dans son pays, au Canada, où elle a ravit la première place des charts alternatifs aux Kings of Leon. Elle continue également d’escalader les charts Modern Rock, atteignant la 5ème place la semaine dernière. Simultanément, le morceau obtient un nombre important de passages dans des stations de radio prescriptrices clés, un peu partout aux États-Unis, en Allemagne et en Irlande. C’est la sixième chanson la plus diffusée sur la prestigieuse Triple J Radio australienne, et elle a même été présentée dans l’édition du dimanche du London Times. Cet élan imprévu a pris le groupe par surprise et il se dépêche pour rendre aussi vite que possible la chanson disponible partout en téléchargement, afin de faire face à la demande. "Help I'm Alive" est sortie sur iTunes au Canada le 23 décembre 2008 et va bientôt être certifiée Or. La chanson sera disponible sur iTunes dans le reste du monde dans les prochaines semaines. Les incursions de METRIC dans le monde du cinéma et de la télévision sont également en train de prendre de l’importance. A la suite de plusieurs passages dans des émissions télé à grand succès comme CSI et Grey’s Anatomy, et après la participation du groupe à Clean, le film encensé par la critique du réalisateur français Olivier Assayas, le célèbre metteur en scène Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) et le légendaire producteur musical Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, U2, Beck) ont demandé à Metric une composition inédite, “Black Sheep”, pour leur film, Scott Pilgrim VS. The World, qui sortira dans les salles au début de l’année 2010. METRIC a été formé à Toronto par Emily Haines et Jimmy Shaw mais a été basé à différentes époques à Montréal, à Londres, à New York et à Los Angeles. Fantasies incarne musicalement les habitudes nomades du groupe. “Pour moi” dit Haines, “les principales influences de ce disque ont été les endroits où nous l’avons écrit. Toute cette chaleur sur l’album provient de nos séances à Bear Creek, ce studio utopique installé dans une ferme perdue dans les bois, près de Seattle, dans l’État du Washington. Travailler à Giant, le studio de Jimmy à Toronto, a amené les éléments plus durs d’electro, de dance et de rock. Entre-temps, j’ai beaucoup écrit en exil à Buenos Aires, avec juste un piano et une guitare, ce qui a apporté au son une plus grande ouverture et de nouvelles perspectives. A la fin, mixer à Electric Lady, à New York, a ramené le groupe là où nous avons commencé, où nous avons rencontré Josh [Winstead, le bassiste] et Joules [Scott-Key, le batteur] pour la première fois il y a cinq ans. Ça a été un sacré voyage.” METRIC s’embarquera sur une tournée américaine en tête d’affiche au mois de juin, dont les dates exactes seront annoncées dans les prochaines semaines. Titre de l’album - Fantasies
Track Listing 1. Help I’m Alive 2. Sick Muse 3. Satellite Mind 4. Twilight Galaxy 5. Gold Guns Girls 6. Gimme Sympathy 7. Collect Call 8. Front Row 9. Blindness 10. Stadium Love
When you hand over your money for a concert ticket, what are you really paying for: some idea of the performer you’ve gleaned from gazing longingly at album covers and compulsively clicking YouTube videos, or the performer as they choose to express themselves on that given day? Is the consumer entitled to a certain expectation of the performance — a satisfaction-guaranteed procession of “the hits”— or should the artist interpret the fan’s investment as a vote of confidence, that the fan is willing to follow their every whim? In other words, is the customer really king, relegating the artist to the role of a court jester whose sole purpose is to entertain on demand? Or does the artist, elevated up on the stage and paid for the privilege, still dictate the terms of the contract? For Metric frontwoman Emily Haines, all these questions came to a head on the evening of March 30, 2008 at the Phoenix Concert Theatre in Toronto. She was all set to perform the sombre piano-based ballads that comprised the two releases from her solo venture, The Soft Skeleton: Knives Don’t Have Your Back and What Is Free To a Good Home? — much of which were written following a time of great sadness and personal loss. But having performed those songs so many times since Knives’ September 2006 release, Haines had an epiphany during that Phoenix show — she didn’t want to be sad anymore. And she didn’t want to play those songs. So, about 40 minutes into the show, she stopped “Dr. Blind” mid-verse and said just that: “I don’t want to play these songs anymore.” Instead, she spent the next half hour talking to her fans, encouraging them to join her at the piano on stage and, for the grand finale, pulling a kid from the audience for an impromptu duet on Metric’s “Live It Out.” She was up for anything — except playing those songs. Some disappointed Soft Skeleton fans in the crowd probably thought the show was a trainwreck. But for Haines herself, it was about getting her mind back on track — to the business of completing Metric’s long-awaited fourth album, Fantasies. “Writing for me comes from a process of trying to piece things together,” says Haines. “The function of music in my life is to help me understand what the hell is happening. This new record was about ending the fragmentation of my existence. Everything in the world right now — all the technology, the way we listen to music or watch films — everything has changed so much in my lifetime. People are allowed to have multiple identities — you’re somebody online, you’re somebody else in public — in multiple dimensions, scattered across the world… I wanted to bring all that into one place, one band, one record… I want to be one person.”
But in order to come together, Metric first had to drift apart. After touring non-stop between 2003’s breakthrough release Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? and 2005’s frenzied follow-up Live It Out, the four members of Metric sought sanctuary in sideline pursuits — Haines threw herself into the Soft Skeleton and took a soul-cleansing sojourn to Argentina; guitarist/co-founder Jimmy Shaw built a neighborhood recording facility, Giant Studio, on Toronto’s burgeoning Ossington Avenue strip with his neighbor Sebastian Grainger; while the Oakland, California-based rhythm section of bassist Joshua Winstead and drummer Joules Scott-Key toured their own garage-rock offshoot, Bang Lime. “We didn't have a moment where we stopped,” says Haines. “When I look back at the touring, it really was like 300 days a year for those three years [between 2003 and 2006]. After that, I thought if we went straight into recording the next album right away we would end up just writing about being in a band on the road because that's all we had experienced. We had to reconnect with our humanity first." Says Shaw: “We allowed this record to take a year and a half whereas for Live It Out we didn’t let it take more than 10 weeks. We just allowed it to take its own process, and whatever that process was going to be, it was going to be, and we were relaxed about it. We wrote when we could — we would get together for a month and then take a couple months to do our own personal shit again.” Formed in Toronto but, at various times, based in Montreal, London, New York and L.A., Metric boasts the sort of history that requires one of those connect-the-dots redlined maps you see in an Indiana Jones movie — and the story of Fantasies is no different. First stop: Bear Creek, located outside Seattle, Washington.
“The four us went out into the woods as a band with no expectations and did whatever we wanted” Haines recalls. “We were coming from London so it was a serious contrast - it felt like we had left civilization and all that mattered was music again. We wrote a lot of songs there including ‘Gimme Sympathy’, ‘Collect Call’... and 'Black Sheep', which isn't on the album 'cause it has a life of its own. When I listen to the finished record, I feel like all its warmth comes from that place in the woods.” In their recent episode of the Bruce McDonald-produced IFC documentary series, The Rawside Of…, Metric can be seen performing these songs in stripped-down, acoustic versions, and following the taut, barb-wired rock of Live It Out, it would’ve made total sense for the band to pursue a simple, back-to-basics approach further. But as the scene shifted over the course of 2007 and 2008 — back to Toronto and then New York, with Haines’ Argentina retreat in between — so too did the shape of the album. And through rigorous road-testing of the new songs, the mercurial material gradually solidified into a singular sound. “We toured the new songs a lot,” Shaw says, “because you might play something 30 times live before you start to realize, ‘Why did I get bored every single time I got to the second verse?’ and ‘Why does the ending always suck?’ The songs went through a lot of surgery, and we really feel like we sculpted them and got the best out of them. I felt like I could hear the sound of the whole thing in my head — it was really big and really dreamy. There were images of chasing invisible butterflies and pterodactyls coming out of their shells and flying off prehistoric cliffs. The sound of the record was more based on the idea of soaring pterodactyls than on that of another band, or some ’70s sound.” Adds Haines, “For me, the major influences on the record were the places we wrote it: Bear Creek, this utopian farmhouse studio, and then our own studio in Toronto, which definitely brought in the electro, dance and rock elements because the city feels so good right now and so many of our musician friends were around. And then for me, being in Buenos Aires, most of the songs I brought to this record came out of being in exile with just a piano and a guitar. And then in the final stages, mixing at Electric Lady in NYC brought everything around to where we first met Josh and Joules.” But Fantasies is not so much about where Metric has been as where it takes you. While Haines’ missives from inside the VIP room (as cutting as ever on motorik rockers “Gold Guns Girls” and “Front Row”) would suggest the titular Fantasies are of the unattainable (or even undesirable) variety, the album’s gilded surfaces and textural density — a heady amalgam of psychedelia, disco, electronica, punk-rock and bubblegum pop — supports Shaw’s assertion that the title is meant to evoke a certain “dream state” quality. And no song better encapsulates the utter surreality of dreaming — that peculiar combination of bliss and terror — than Fantasies’ massive glam-rockin’ closer “Stadium Love,” a song meant to be heard in the building it’s named after, but whose candy-coated “ooh-ooh-ie-ooh” chorus just might distract you from all the crazy shit happening during the verses in between. Haines explains: “I had just gotten back from Coachella, and I walked into the studio and noticed on the bulletin board that Joules had written ‘spider vs bat,’ i think he had been obsessively watching all these National Geographic animals-fighting-each-other-videos in his hotel room. For me, that phrase triggered an entire narrative that was about a gladiator-style enormo-dome where everything turns in on itself, with every form of aggression on display for spectators: monster trucks ramming into each other, bull fighting, sweaty men wrestling. And then you have these animals completely disconnected from the logic of their natural habitat, so you have a swan pecking the shit out of an elephant and pigs biting the necks out of tigers, and bats attacking spiders. And then in the seats, the spectators are kicking the shit out of each other too. There’s this completely blurred line between spectator and participant, and we’re all trapped in this fucked up Noah’s Ark. The images came to me all at once, and I wrote the lyrics on the spot.” And so an album that began its life as an acoustic jam session in the bucolic woods outside Seattle ends in a cartoon orgy of bloodshed in some mythical arena that exists in the darkest recesses of Emily Haines’ mind. Each extreme represents a fantasy in their own right: the ideal of hermetic artistic purity versus the spectacle of excess and decadence. Being yourself versus being what they want you to be. Emily Haines stared down these very polarities on her own that night at the Phoenix, but with Fantasies, Metric are now free to define their reality on their own terms. So when, amid the daydream electro of “Gimme Sympathy,” Haines invokes that age-old existential dilemma — “Who would you rather be: The Beatles or The Rolling Stones?” — it’s only because she already knows the answer: neither.
