Metric wants university students to sit up and take notice, or so it would seem. The indie-rock darlings are playing the annual Queen’s Frosh Week concert as part of a string of seven university Orientation Week concerts in less than two weeks. In the midst of the university mini-tour preceeding Metric’s trip through eastern Canada and the U.S., bass player Josh Winstead said though the schedule might be grueling, the reward is in the audience.
“They’re great, we played two shows yesterday,” he said. “The kids just love the music.”
Despite rumours and a Wikipedia entry saying a third full-length album will be ready for release this October, Winstead says this isn’t true. Although plans are in the works for a new album, the band will just be finishing up their current tour on Oct. 9 and much of the songwriting has yet to be completed for the next album.
“I’m not even sure if we’re going to record in the fall or in the early winter,” Winstead said. “It kind of depends on what happens within the next few weeks with our writing, and we still haven’t picked a producer.” That said, Winstead said the band’s fall tour will include plenty of new material. This is something the band has done intentionally, hoping it will help to solidify songwriting decisions for the album.
“Sometimes you try to record something, and then later you play it live and find that it doesn’t translate. Right now, we’re hoping for ,” he said. “Then with this new feeling and new dynamic and understanding, we can go into the studio and we should be able to record it in the studio really fast.”
The next album will be different from the band’s last two albums because the writing process and the individual ’ involvement has changed so much from Metric’s beginning. Guitarist James Shaw and vocalist Emily Haines, as the original , did all of the writing on their debut full-length album, Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? On Live it Out, Winstead said he was a little more involved, through writing his own bass parts and giving input as to which songs would end up on the album. But both Haines and Shaw still had a collection of their own songs from which to draw.
“At this point nobody had any songs that are in the closet, nobody had anything to pull out from before,” Winstead said. “We had these writing sessions where somebody would just go into a room and pick up an instrument and start playing, just to see what happens, and then someone would walk in and be like, ‘That sounds good,’ and in.” This time around, the band didn’t stick to their respective instruments, but traded them, giving the songs a fresh feel. Shaw was playing keyboard and bass at times, while Haines and Winstead played guitar.
The one aspect of the band’s writing that hasn’t changed, however, are Haines’ romance- and real-life themed trademark lyrics.
“Emily will come in and ask us what we think about different things, if they’re representative of our lives or, ‘How does it make you feel?’ ” Winstead said. “She’ll ask for our input, but it’s definitely Emily who writes the lyrics.” The band met in New York City, where guitarist James Shaw and vocalist and keyboard player Emily Haines were living and playing music. The pair were looking for a drummer and gave a demo album to Joules Scott-Key to listen to.
Winstead, who had been playing music with Scott-Key for 12 years at that point, recalls encouraging him to Metric without any idea that he himself would wind up playing with the band.
“I him bringing the album home and listening to it and saying, ‘You should definitely that band, I think they sound really good.’ ” Winstead said.
That album became Grow Up and Blow Away, which was re-released this summer after the band bought it back from their former record company.
Although Winstead isn’t usually a bass player—his main fortes are vocals and guitar—he was invited to play some shows with Metric after their bassist quit on short notice.
“I thought it was temporary,” Winstead said. “I hadn’t really played bass, but I’d played with Joules for so long that it made for a really strong rhythm section.”
Though the Canadian indie renaissance claims the band as one of its own, Metric can hardly be considered a Canadian band. Though Shaw is Canadian, Winstead and Scott-Key are both Americans and Haines has dual citizenship. The band met in Brooklyn, wrote most of the songs on Old World Underground in Los Angeles and signed to Everloving Records while living there.
“People want borders, they want to find pride in something,” Winstead said. “I don’t believe in patriotism; I think it’s so ugly. I’m not proud to be an American, but I’m not not-proud to be an American.” Whether they’re Canadian or American, and although he might not believe in drawing lines on a map, Winstead isn’t ashamed to claim pride in his band.
“We put on a damn good show,” he said. “I’m proud of us.”
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