Metric

Metric biography

Metric is a Canadian indie rock and New Wave band founded in 1998 in Toronto. The band has also at various times been based in Montreal, London, New York City and Los Angeles. Metric consists of vocalist Emily Haines (who also plays the synthesizer and guitar), guitarist James Shaw (who also plays the synthesizer and theremin), bassist Josh Winstead and drummer Joules Scott-Key.

Their first full-length album, Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?, was released in 2003 and earned a Juno Award nomination for Best Alternative Album. Live It Out was released on October 4, 2005 and was nominated for the 2006 Polaris Music Prize for the Canadian Album of The Year and once again the Juno Award nomination for Best Alternative Album.

The first album the band recorded, Grow Up and Blow Away, was finally released on June 26, 2007 by Last Gang Records. The album was originally recorded for Restless Records, but got neglected when the label was bought out by Rykodisc.

Haines and Shaw also perform with Broken Social Scene, and Haines has been a guest on albums by Stars, KC Accidental, The Stills, Jason Collett and Tií«sto. Scott-Key and Winstead have their own side project, Bang Lime, and Haines has released a solo album and companion EP, Knives Don't Have Your Back and What Is Free to a Good Home?, respectively, under the name Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton.

Their fourth studio album Fantasies was released in Canada and the United States on April 7, 2009. It was shortlisted for the 2009 Polaris Music Prize for Canadian Album of the Year, and won the Alternative Album of the Year at the 2010 Juno Awards. Metric won as well in 2010 Group of the Year.

History

Beginnings

Born in New Delhi, India, and raised in Cache Bay, Ontario, Emily Haines grew up as a dual citizen of Canada and India. The daughter of poet Paul Haines (best known for his lyrical collaboration with Carla Bley in the 1971 jazz opera Escalator over the Hill), left London at the age of 3. Paul would often make cassettes of rare and eclectic music for his daughter to listen to and her early influences included Carla Bley and Robert Wyatt.

By her teens she attended Etobicoke School of the Arts, following in her parents' footsteps. There she met Amy Millan and Kevin Drew, with whom she would later collaborate in hHead. Haines and Millan briefly formed their first band around 1990 while at ESA, 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.

UK born 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 synthesizer player of Stars. Torq had plans to move to New York City and on his suggestion, Shaw applied to Juilliard Music School and moved to New York with him. After a three-year education at the institution, Shaw had acquired considerable classical training but did not enjoy his stay and knew his musical interests lay elsewhere.

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