Jasmine Phull gets deep and meaningful with Canadian New Wave band Metric's Emily Haines and James Shaw, as the band returns from a four year hiatus with a new album, Fantasies.
A song is an equation that put simply contains one half lyrics and one half instrumental. One compliments the other. Sounds pretty simple really, but then things never really are. Canadian harmonic rockers Metric enjoy creating music that drowns in depth and melancholy yet their sunny instrumental accompaniments would have you believe otherwise. It’s a complete paradox but that “is the Metric thing,” says Emily Haines.
Haines is the lead vocalist and lyricist; the one most “preoccupied with the words”- and this can be quite a heavy role she confesses.
After the success of their 2005 studio album ‘Live It Out’ the band drove into a bit of a cul-de-sac. Their music reeked of the follies of being ‘in a band’; the ambiguities that it placed on life after the tour; a phenomenon that Haines readily recognizes in many other popular bands. Her lyrics were becoming stagnated and the band quickly decided that this identity was merely a facade and not who they wanted to be. They realised that in order to relate to their audience they had to do as they did. Just live their ‘lives’ sans the band. So they did, and Haines ran off to Buenos Aires; a move she highly recommends to any writer who understands that new experience is the key to a fresh heart and mind.
Today I sit with Emily Haines and James Shaw in East London’s swanky Shoreditch House. The pair has the ability to bounce off one another, musing about life’s existentialities and reveling in the divergence. Ordinarily this would make my job all the more harder but today Metric’s long-time music partners were only making my job easier. Our conversation was riddled with answers I did not hold the questions to, yet this time I did not feel the need to intervene.
The quartet has just come off a four year hiatus but without scratching the surface you wouldn’t know it. During the break Haines and Shaw began performing with fellow Canadian compatriots Broken Social Scene, Haines released solo projects and fellow Metric members Scott-Key and Winstead created Bang Lime. With their fourth studio album Fantasies, the band would this time not create an album “about everything that was wrong in the world”. Instead it would address problems of being human that are just as much of an issue as “the Bush administration... or the toxics released from umbilical cord wastage,” says Haines. After such a prolonged period this progression and evolution was an inevitability, but like pieces of a puzzle Emily Haines, guitarist James Shaw, bassist Josh Winstead and drummer Joules Scott-Key feel like they’d never left. But “Thank god they did,” says Shaw.
Emily, you are the solo lyricist. Do the albums ever feel like your diaries?
Emily: Not at all. It’s more constructive than that and I wouldn’t subject people to just ‘diary-like’ entry style.
James: It seems more like commentary than purely personal thoughts. It’s not how you feel about yourself, it’s how you feel about the world. But then no writer can speak from someone else’s perspective.
Emily: So obviously it’s my perspective.
James: It’s more about what we feel falls under the umbrella of what the record is trying to say.
Emily: The themes.
Where did the name of the album Fantasies stem from?
James: It’s about the idea that the world is whatever you decide it is. We wanted to create a sense of the ‘surreal’. Sonically what we were going for was this other-worldly, space-organic kinda thing.
Emily: An acoustic guitar in space.
That’s what you were trying to tap into?
Emily: Kind of. For me, being the person who is quite preoccupied with the words, that word: ‘Fantasy’ is quite loaded. It can be a dream or ideal but also the idea that you can be living in a dream. Your perception and what you are projecting onto what you see is your personal reality. For us that was the theme: Is a dream coming true perhaps really unpleasant because it is no longer a dream?
You seem to convey a pseudo female empowerment. Is there a female artist that you are inspired by?
Emily: I can cite a laundry list of female artists but I do try to approach music without boundaries. So I would say it’s Lou Reed as much as it is Kim Gordon. But I definitely think that out of my contemporaries M.I.A is amazing.
James: But it’s weird because the opposite question to that is: ‘So are there any males out there that you find inspirational’? That question has never been asked to anyone, ever. It’s like somehow insinuating that being a female is the exception instead of a default. You didn’t have a choice.
You were just born that way (laughs).
James: Exactly. It’s not like ‘Oh, I decided to be a female artist’. Um. No.
Emily: A gender is not a genre. I think the true victory for our generation of girls is when we stop being asked questions that are based around being female. We’re going to know that everything is okay when it (being female) stops being unusual.
I read that back in 1998 you guys were room-mates with members out of the YYY’s, Liars and TV on the Radio. Was that just a huge coincidence or was it something you strictly outlined in the ad. ‘Must be an aspiring musician’ kinda thing.
James: Complete coincidence. There might have been something about that space, as completely dire and depressing as it was, that lead to all those people being successful. But there certainly wasn’t the sense at the time that any of us were going to amount to anything. We were all trying our arses off though.
Emily: This was the time when the drummer from Interpol was working in a vintage clothing store in Williamsburg. I was taking my demos of ‘Grow Up and Blow Away’ to sell on CD-R in the CD section.
James: Now that you see the progression of it you can say: ‘Oh we were working towards this thing’. I don’t think any of us understood that then. We just saw: ‘We’re all just broke living in a loft’.
Emily: ‘Who isn’t a musician?’
James: Yea: ‘Can we please meet someone who isn’t an aspiring musician’.
So you didn’t all collaborate. Perhaps jam together? (Laughs)
Emily: Well, no. One of my favourite myths to burst the bubble of is the idea that there we all were jammin’ away. Not true at all. Zero collaborations. The one thing that we did have in common is that we all wanted to get out of that fucking loft. It was a very bad-ass group of people who were not looking for anything but to move forward on their own. Maybe that’s sad but I kind of like that idea.
James: Personally that’s what I got from NY. I never got a supportive energy. Everyone is looking out for themselves and no one gives a shit about anyone else.
Emily: Which is good. That’s why you go to NY.
James: That’s the American way of doing things. America is very very competitive. The only people that get to the top usually pass other people on their way.
Emily: Toronto’s not like that at all.
James: In Canada the great goal is for all artists to reach the top of the mountain together. It’s really quite contrary in its basis. I think that’s one of the things that contributed to us saying: ‘We don’t want to be here anymore’. In that scene at that time it was horrible in Williamsburg.
Emily: The late 90’s was the time of Giuliani and artists were just being treated like shit.
James: You can ask any one of the other artists that lived there during that time and they’ll say the same thing.
Emily: They’ll say: ‘It sucked’. You know it’s the most polluted city in North America but now it’s become a Mecca.
You’ve said: With this record you “wanted to convey something other than a very meticulous list of what's wrong with everything”.
Emily: Pretty much not doing what I’m doing right now? (Laughs) Yea, definitely. At the height of the Bush administration and the Iraq War we felt compelled as socially conscious people to address things that weren’t being said. Now it’s a very different time; all those things have been said. It’s a completely different state. It’s like Obama won. Now what?
James: There’s a theme in ‘Fantasies’ that’s not so much addressing problems politically but the problems of being a human being; themes of your own insecurities, your own greed and the general pitfalls of being human. ‘Stadium Love’ is about people eating the whole planet up. ‘Gold Gun Girls’ is completely about greed and how far it can go and how much you want compared to how much you need. ‘Help I’m Alive’ is addressing what you feel like when you feel like the world is against you. ‘Fantasises’ is about the themes of being human.
James when you analyse the lyrics as you just did a reader might not guess that the music behind the lyrics is actually quite lovely and happy... Something you can listen to on a sunny day.
Emily: That’s what we’ve always done. We energise the acknowledgment of the things that are difficult.
James: We’re trying to say that addressing your life isn’t a bad thing. It’ll get better and lighter.
Is that reflected in the cover of the album?
James: Yea. The cover of the album is this light-bulb and it’s really, really dark around it. In fact too dark cause the printer made it too dark. But the idea is: Is it light within the darkness? Or is it darkness within the light. Do you open the door and look at it or do you live in the darkness? For us the fantasy is that instead of 2% of the world addressing its issues, why doesn’t everyone step up?
Although there’s been a four year gap since you last released an album it doesn’t seem like Metric’s direction has really changed. But within that period each of you were working on other projects, collaborations, solo ventures etc has that separation helped in the evolution and progression of Metric? You must have changed in some way.
Emily: I hope so.
James: Touring and doing ‘this’ can get really monotonous; all of a sudden you have nothing to say about anything.
Emily: We decided we were not writing another album about touring and before the break that was the only thing we were writing about. It was like: ‘Hmm let me guess? Another song about being on tour but being really homesick and not really knowing what you’re going back to’? Oh wow, we were not going to be that band, again. We decided we had to ‘live’ in order to be able to relate to people. It’s quite a phenomenon; a lot of bands are just about ‘being in a band’ and ‘singing about being in a band’.
Metric seems to be in its element when playing live. What’s the best part of the live gig?
James: When it’s really really good, there’s like a total tornado that happens. It’s like the ingredients are just people. In a way all those people come to see a reflection of themselves and we come to see a reflection of ourselves. Both reflections, when they match perfectly, just fly and hit the ceiling.
Emily: That’s so well put. I always think of it as: we are a reflection for the audience. As if putting something up for the audience to see themselves in. But of course it is mutual, which is why when you have those really transcendent shows it’s such a beautiful experience.
You’ve managed to find you way back to each other after the four years. Now, is Metric forever?
There’s no forever right now. A lot of the things we were always shooting for are happening right now, so I don’t think there’s any sign of us slowing down or breaking up. We’re on a pretty good Vegas streak right now so we’re going to keep rolling.
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