Who: Metric
When: Friday, April 24
Where: Main Stage, Skiers Plaza
Cost: Free!
Guitarist Jimmy Shaw is a classically trained musician and one of the original members of Metric, which he founded with singer Emily Haines, back in 1998.
While Juilliard may seem miles away from Metric's eclectic sound, Shaw and Haines didn't set out to make obscure music, they just wanted to get to people. And they've done that. It just took a while to figure out how.
"When Emily and I first met the idea was, 'let's make music that is for everyone, but is really, really good. Let's be the really good thing on the radio, because for the most part, radio sucks.'"
When the group first started out, they were slightly ahead of the curve, being among the few artists that embraced technology and opted to make their music available via the web to build a solid fan base.
"I know that there is a negative side of it for other artists because everyone's set up is kind of different and everyone's business is set up differently, and everyone wants different things out of what they do in music," Shaw said.
But since digital media has come to dominate the music industry, through sites like MySpace, et al, music has been made more accessible to the masses. And in some ways, Shaw argues, it's also made the industry more democratic, because it isn't just up to one A&R guy to "discover" artists.
"There are more bands than ever, there are more ways to get their music out to fans, and it's like someone can record a song in their bedroom for 10 bucks, put it up on MySpace for nothing and have 100,000 fans overnight if the music is really good."
Now, they've released four full-length records, including their most recent, Fantasies , which debuted at the beginning of April. This new 10-track album has a definitively different, more cohesive sound than the group's past three full-length albums - think disco meets psychedelia, rock and dance.
And so far, the response to that new sound has been extremely positive.
"It just kind of seems in some way that all the little pieces of Metric that we've been sort of waiting for, like a Connect Four game... somehow all the chips just dropped and there's some serious synchronicity happening right now," Shaw said.
The Toronto-based foursome seems to have hit its stride, but it didn't come without a slight hiccup along the way.
Back in March '08, Haines was playing a solo show in Toronto when suddenly, 40 minutes into her set, she decided she simply couldn't play any more sad music. So she stopped.
"It was definitely a turning point," Shaw recalled.
He actually had spent a great day in the studio with their producer, and left to check out Haines's solo show.
"We felt like we really, really should go and support and be there for a minute, so we jetted out of the studio, we headed down there and saw like two songs and then we saw the whole thing start to dissolve and fall apart right in front of our eyes," he said. "...To me, that is Emily's brilliance, it's that she is literally unable to lie about what she feels. She can't even sing a song that she doesn't relate to in that moment. It's kind of an incredible thing."
The pressure was on: this time around, the group was paying for the album, and there was certainly a lot of demand from legions of fans eager to hear what they had up their sleeves.
"We really let everything take its time and when things weren't coming naturally, we didn't push it, we didn't fight it."
Instead, when they hit a wall, the members would go their own separate ways for a while to work on personal projects - Haines went to Argentina and kept developing her solo project, Soft Skeleton. Bassist Joshua Winstead and drummer Joules Scott-Key opted to tour with their garage-rock group, Bang Lime. Meanwhile, Shaw got busy building a neighbourhood recording studio.
Finally, Fantasies was born after almost 18 months. That compares with a 10-week gestation period for most of their other albums.
"We wanted it to be like really, really big and expansive and kind of almost like the sound of revelation, in a sense," Shaw explained. "Use the analogy of someone breaking out of their shell, entering some massive, terrifying, expansive terrain and learning to fly."
Their new laidback approach, coupled with a massive vision, seems to have yielded heady results.
"A really good friend of mine, who is actually a writer, when he first heard the record he said to me - and he's known us all for over 10 years, personally - 'to me, this is the sound of Metric exhaling.'"
While Metric seems to have found a perfect balance between personal and professional, now they're throwing themselves head-first back into their music as they focus on bringing this new record to the world.
This time around, they've decided to start small with their shows, playing intimate acoustic shows at 300-person venues. The hope is that these small venues will lend well to the dreamlike feel of the new album.
Their upcoming Whistler gig is actually the biggest on their tour schedule. In fact, Metric's track record in the Sea to Sky region is pretty extensive - they've performed at the Telus World Ski and Snowboard Festival before, and other outdoor concerts in town, with at least one such occasion sticking out in Shaw's mind.
"I remember the (show) where Emily tore down the barricade and there was like a riot and the mayor of Whistler said that we would never be allowed back," Shaw said with a laugh. "And then we came back the next year."
The group also took the stage at Pemberton Festival, which was a surreal musical experience for the entire group.
"That was honestly one of the most amazing moments of my life, walking out on that stage. We were the first band on the main stage on the first day, and it felt like the pent-up energy in that crowd was like nothing I'd ever witnessed in my whole life," Shaw recalled. "Walking out on that stage and hearing that crowd roar made my entire body melt. It was insane."
