Metric - Additive Synthesis

Some may agree that Emily Haines is like a drug that you never want fading away. She is a fast bullet that tries to make sense of the ruin and with her sexy drifting vocals she has a magic that leaves you completely shaken up. The combination of her and the three men she shares the stage with take music to whole new level. Empowered by complete passion and adventure, Metric started from a dream and has continued to keep us at the edge of our seats wishing we could be apart of the dream they’re living. Their latest album, Synthetica, exemplifies the meaning between what is real versus what is artificial, furthering the boundaries between genres and confronting the type of people we are. Currently on tour, they will be making their way for the first time to perform at the Republik in Honolulu, Hawaii. We were able to catch lead guitarist, James Shaw before their show on April 13 to talk about the exciting new tour stop.

Let’s start from the beginning, how did Metric start?
Wow that was a long time ago, I met Emily in Toronto and we started making music together. Years later we were living in Brooklyn, New York and we met Josh and Jules and they had sort of gone on a similar adventure and moved to New York to follow a career in music. The four of us sort of shared a similar vision on how we wanted to live our lives and the type of music we wanted to make. Then we ended up in a band together.

What is the process when it comes to writing songs?
Uhm, usually Emily writes a lot of the music but there is either two things that happens, Emily will write songs and bring them to me and I’ll sort of arrange them, produce them and sort of change them into Metric songs or I’ll write music on my own and send her stuff. She will sort of write lyrics, vocals and melodies on top of that, and then we bring it to the studio and turn it into a Metric record.

Out of all your songs which one means the most to you?
That’s impossible to say. That’s like saying which one of your kids do you love the most?

Do you hold maybe a top five?
Uhm, not really, they come in and out for me. I was in a taxi in Los Angeles a couple of years ago and a song came on the radio of a song of ours from our record, Live It Out. I literally had no recollection of writing or recording that song on any level and I haven’t thought about it in years. I heard it and thought it was really cool. After that I got really obsessed with it and relearned how to play, it was weird you know? Sometimes they just leave for a while and then come back.

In what ways have you changed since your first album?
That’s kind of a subjective thing, music is just one of those things where people hear our albums and think that it’s progressed in one way and others think our albums have progressed in another. When we put out Fantasies and we started doing press for it, there were one or two questions that would be asked first in every single interview. They would be, wow this record is so much darker than your other records or this record is so much more positive than your other and it’s the same record. It just depends on where you’re coming from, it depends on why you’re listening or how you’re listening and what it means to you. To me personally, we’ve just evolved as people, I have no objectivity on the music. I just hear the development of the more people involved and everything that we’ve done to just grow as people and how that is reflected in our music.

What is the reaction you hope for from your listeners?
I hope they understand what were doing and obviously I hope that they like it. It’s a weird thing making music because you don’t really know what anybody is going to think why you make it. Usually the process in making and recording music is quite a sheltered one. You don’t really know what’s going to happen and it has this amazing state before it’s released when anything’s possible. You don’t know if it’s going to change the world or do absolutely nothing. There’s sort of a beauty in that. I’ve had many musicians talk to me about this same thing, where the reality is usually less thrilling then the possibility. I don’t know if that’s necessarily because sometimes it does well and sometimes it doesn’t, there’s just no such thing as a reality that’s as good as what could happen in the imagination.

Where do you see Metric in 10 years?
God I have no idea. We might still be together, we might not be, I don’t know. Vegas?

Lastly, any final words for the readers?
Yea, we’re really excited to come to Hawaii. There’s been lots of talk over the years on stopping there on the way to Asia or on the way back but it just never seemed to happen so this time we’re really excited to come.