(Above: Metric get raw for “Monster Hospital” on August 12, 2012, at the Beaumont Club in Kansas City, Mo.)
By Joel Francis
The Daily Record
It took a few songs for Metric’s set to get off the ground Wednesday night at the Beaumont Club, but once the band finally took off they soard.
An abundance of new material and time getting the mix right contributed to the muted start, but the biggest issue was personnel. On their next tour, the four-piece Canadian indie pop band should consider bringing someone else to help with keyboards. Frontwoman Emily Haines is far too charismatic and has too great a stage presence to be wedged behind her synthesizers.
Although recent single “Youth Without Youth” got a warm response, the first big moment came during “Empty.” It is telling that this is also the first time Haines was feed from her station for a significant amount of time. Effortlessly prowling the front of the stage, Haines flipped her blonde locks from side to side with the beat and cooed a charged call and response from the crowd.
Once she had the crowd, Haines never let go. The icy synthesizers on “Clone” seemed to subconsciously draw the two-thirds full room closer to the stage. Radio hit “Help, I’m Alive” drew a predictably strong response and got most of the audience dancing and singing along.
For most of their 90-minute set, Metric shuffled a glorious deck of influences. At certain times strains of Brian Eno, New Order, Pet Shop Boys and U2 were plainly audible. During the encore the band showed another facet, dropping the synthesizers and playing straight-up rock and roll. “Monster Hospital” almost sounded like a punk song and the slyly political “Gold Guns Girls” featured Haines on electric guitar.
The setlist drew heavily from this year’s “Syntheitica” album. After reeling off five of its tracks in a row to open the show, Metric eventually performed all but three of the album’s cuts. Of the remaining songs Wednesday night, all but two came from 2009’s much-loved “Fantasies.”
Final song “Gimme Sympathy” turned the room from a discotheque to a campfire. With the rhythm section departed, Haines and guitarist James Shaw turned the fan favorite into a quiet acoustic number. On the chorus Haines posed the challenge music nerds have been debating for a generation: “Who’d you rather be/the Beatles or the Rolling Stones?” The answer, of course, is that there is no wrong answer. By revving up the crowd with jackhammer dance beats and getting everyone to sing along a cappella, Haines proved that she can have it both ways as well.
Setlist: Artificial Nocturne, Youth Without Youth, Speed the Collapse, Dreams So Real, Lost Kitten, Empty, Help, I’m Alive; Synthetica, Clone, Breathing Underwater, Sick Muse, Dead Disco, Stadium Love. Encore: Monster Hospital, Gold Guns Girls, Gimme Sympathy.
Keep reading:
Review: Metric (2009)
