Sunday

Metric – Pop Ain’t A Dirty Word

Emily Haines Metric

You can’t always judge music by what it sounds like. Well, you could, and then you would probably say that Metric is a great pop band, but you would only be half right. While their 2003 release, Old World Underground, Where are you Now?, is catchy like flypaper, it sticks long enough for you to figure out what synth-playing singer Emily Haines is actually saying about pop-culture. The four-piece of no fixed address have been lazily labeled pop by many a music writer for singles like “Combat Baby”, in which Haines sings about “caffeine-free faux-punk fatigue,” over punked-up guitar riffs provided by James Shaw. And unlike any good pop band, they formed themselves. In 1998 two Canadian kids—Haines and Shaw—formed Metric in a Brooklyn loft. Since then drummer Joules Scott-Key and his Texas schoolmate Josh Winstead, who happens to play a mean bass guitar, have completed the band.