In her own words
Issue #26
Metric's Emily Haines reviews the band's latest album, Live It Out
By Emily Haines
Published: December 1st, 2005 | 4:50pm
While on tour, Metric vocalist Emily Haines (who spends time in Broken Social Scene’s large cast of musicians) shoots Venus an email to explain the differences between Metric’s debut LP, Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?, and their latest, the new wave, dance-floor Live It Out. In the process, she talks about the origins of some Metric songs, her band’s battle against becoming part of the soul-destroying music industry, and their inevitable resignation to it. — Kristina Francisco
When we made Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?, we were at the end of an eight-year search for a self-sustaining world of artists which we imagined living in forever with our dead heroes and potentially legendary friends. The fact that our quest ran out of gas in Los Angeles is reflected in the album we wrote and recorded there. “Succexy” emerged after many long nights of watching “war” on television. Songs like “The List” were scrawled on napkins from hotel rooftop bars as we got more wrapped up in Los Angeles and tried to make sense of it.
In an attempt to recover from this moral error (living in L.A., buying into the whole L.A. scene and the whole fast-paced industry life), we went to Canada and recorded songs like “Empty” and “Handshakes” for our new album, Live It Out. Alas, it was too late. Our souls, now residing permanently with Satan, were never coming back. We had a couple conference calls, went for a drink, and decided to keep on going.
The two Metric albums differ from one another for a couple of straightforward reasons as well.
1) Old World... was recorded strictly during daylight hours, whereas Live It Out was created entirely at night, with most sessions beginning around eight in the evening and ending at dawn or later.
2) Old World... was made in sunny California while Live it Out was made in Toronto and Montreal in the dead of winter.
3) Our own Jimmy Shaw [guitarist] produced Live It Out with the band in a studio we built for this purpose. Old World... was produced by our friend and soundtrack guru, Michael Andrews.
On Old World, we were just getting started so we were a little tentative. We had never been on tour and were unsure what we actually sounded like or who our fans would be. On this album, we’ve applied what we’ve learned so the recordings sound more natural. We’ve relaxed and accepted who we are: insatiable egomaniacs using music to justify our desperate greed.
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