metric at the showbox
metric // the showbox // 9 october 2007
Opening a set with two newish songs is a bold move, but when you’ve brought your own wind machine and a matching lightshow it’s the sort of thing that just might work. Such was the case with Metric’s performance at the Showbox on Tuesday night. An attentive crowd soon moved from soaking in the newness to dancing wildly upon recognition of more familiar material. Having only seen the band at festivals — from the edge of a tent on a sweltering day in Indio or from behind the fence at Bumbershoot — I don’t think that I anticipated the fervor of the crowd dynamics once the show started rolling.
Stoked by Emily Haines’s regular prowling along the edge of the stage, taunting the audience for more energy, and meeting as many of the forest of outstretched hands as possible, occasionally catching her balance on shaggy bespectacled heads, the floating floor regularly bounced in time with the dancing masses. After my designated three songs I was quick to return my camera to the coat check rather than avoid or dodge the dancing masses. The typical evolution of a Metric song is amenable to such a response. There’s the forceful soloish opening that gets wrapped in a a cocoon of big guitars and steady drumbeats, launching both the music and the fans into a lather, and by the end everyone is sweaty and Emily is headbanging at her keyboard. She’s a huge rock star in a band that’s still small enough for throngs of kids in the front row to feel a little bit of ownership at their discovery of this talented woman with her hair flipping stylishly in an electric-powered breeze.
Wearing a Jimi Hendrix t-shirt fashioned into a dress to celebrate the occasion a Seattle visit, Haines reflected on the melancholy of closing the reality show summercamp-like experience of a tour. The main set closed with a hyper-extended version of “Rock Me”. By the end, searching spotlights and the voices of the crowd, eventually coaxed into singing the ooh-ah-ooh part of “Rock Me Now”, were all that was left as each member of the band walked quietly off stage. Of course, they all came back for a less lighter-flickery encore of fist-pumping “Monster Hospital” and new anthem “Stadium Love”.
Shouted questions about a release date for a new album, were cast aside with an appropriate mantra. Who cares, “let’s just play music.”
Related posts:
- tuesday agenda : metric, michaels, walk
- scissor sisters at the showbox : a follow-up report
- Dance party at the Showbox: Architecture in Helsinki and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
- josé gonzález at the showbox
- NOFX - Showbox Sodo
