Metric - Artist of the Month @ musicalescapades.com

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Artist in Focus -  Metric

Fantasies (Metric Music International)
Release Date: April 14, 2009

In other words, is the customer really king, relegating the artist to the role of a court jester whose sole purpose is to entertain on demand? Or does the artist, elevated up on the stage and paid for the privilege, still dictate the terms of the contract?

For Metric frontwoman Emily Haines, all these questions came to a head on the evening of March 30, 2008 at the Phoenix Concert Theatre in Toronto. She was all set to perform the somber piano-based ballads that comprised the two releases from her solo venture, The Soft Skeleton: Knives Don’t Have Your Back and What Is Free To a Good Home? — much of which were written following a time of great sadness and personal loss.

She was up for anything — except playing those songs. Some disappointed Soft Skeleton fans in the crowd probably thought the show was a trainwreck. But for Haines herself, it was about getting her mind back on track — to the business of completing Metric’s long-awaited fourth album, Fantasies.

But in order to come together, Metric first had to drift apart. After touring non-stop between 2003’s breakthrough release Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? and 2005’s frenzied follow-up Live It Out, the four members of Metric sought sanctuary in sideline pursuits — Haines threw herself into the Soft Skeleton and took a soul-cleansing sojourn to Argentina; guitarist/co-founder Jimmy Shaw built a neighborhood recording facility, Giant Studio, on Toronto’s burgeoning Ossington Avenue strip with his neighbor Sebastian Grainger; while the Oakland, California-based rhythm section of bassist Joshua Winstead and drummer Joules Scott-Key toured their own garage-rock offshoot, Bang Lime.