Can Metric Beat the System With Their New Album?

"Who would you rather be: the Beatles or the Rolling Stones?" wonders Metric's lead singer, Emily Haines, in their new song 'Gimme Sympathy.' It's a question music fans have asked themselves since the 1960s, and if one views those British Invaders as metaphors -- the Beatles being short-lived artistic purists, say, and the Stones repping the endless corporate juggernaut -- than it's a question that remains relevant to today's musicians trying to balance artistic and commercial concerns.

This is especially true for Metric, whose accessibly melodic synth-pop has prompted backlash from the too-cool kids. This despite the Toronto band's pedigree, which is so impeccably indie the quartet is self-releasing its fantastic new album, 'Fantasies,' outside Canada. But the band's first full-length since 2005's 'Live It Out' also includes the unabashedly anthemic 'Stadium Love,' a guitar'n'keyboard banger big enough to tear the roof off any arena.

Not surprisingly, considering Metric got their first taste of stadium love opening for the Rolling Stones in New York's Madison Square Garden in 2006, they say the question itself isn't quite so cut and dried...

"If something can't be read at least three ways, than there's not enough in there," demurs Haines, the group's singer and lyricist. "I'm not a big fan of saying definitively this is what this song means. It represents different things to different people. The Beatles means to some people loyalty to your family or home life and Rolling Stones mean going on forever and never stopping, never growing up."

"You could think of it the other way," bassist Joshua Winstead chimes in. "In the beginning the Beatles were the commercial guys and the Stones were the outcast, crazy guys."

"So maybe the Rolling Stones didn't evolve but just accumulated more and more people and became this corporation, but it wasn't by design," reconsiders Haines. "And the Beatles deteriorated into egomaniacal pursuits of Indian rhythms. Maybe they completely lost the plot of the function of music and ended up with somebody shot in New York City?"

"I love the question and I could toss it around for ever," she smiles. "I would never answer it."

Perhaps the whole point of Metric is that they won't be forced into taking sides. Haines and Shaw formed Metric as a trip-hop duo in the late-90s and spent their early years bouncing between Toronto, Montreal, Brooklyn, London and Los Angeles. Their current album, meanwhile, had its genesis in the woods outside Seattle and the cityscape of Buenos Ares before being recorded back home in T.O.

Similarly, their multi-faceted music balances hope and fear, love and anger -- sometimes all in one song, like their tentatively uplifting epic 'Help, I'm Alive.' The song, which leaked in December and became the band's first Canadian number-one single, revels in euphoric synthesizers and "no regrets" declarations even as a heart-pounding Haines worries "they're going to eat me alive if I stumble."

Metric have always been adamant about followed their own career path, even when it seemed counterproductive to increasing their popularity or pocketbooks. Take their very first video 'Succexy,' which featured stop-motion toy soldiers despite Haines being Canada's hands-down hottest singer. They also turned down a presumably obscene amount of money to use that same song in a car commercial because its anti-Iraq War message conflicted with the advertised item.

"The things we do are on a case-by-case basis," explains Haines. "Hummer comes along and asks us if they can use 'Succexy' in a commercial, we say no. 'Grey's Anatomy' says 'we want to use your song in the show and we'll say your name and that your album is coming out at the end,' and we say thank you very much. Edgar Wright comes to us with his new film ['Scott Pilgrim vs The World'] and wants Metric to write a song for it, we say yes!"

"We just got offered a shampoo commercial where they want an edgy woman and to have the music playing in the background and featuring the singer," she smirks. "There's no conversation about what shampoo is it, it's just no."

"There's no balancing act," interjects founding guitarist and co-producer Jimmy Shaw. "We don't compromise. Then you hope for success."

Metric hasn't earned either the indie cred of Broken Social Scene (Haines and Shaw's other band) or the stratospheric sales of their friend Feist. But they have been able to persevere through considerable hardship to reach their current heights, including their first label going belly-up before dropping Metric's debut 'Grow Up And Blow Away' (which Metric eventually bought back and released in 2007). Many similar bands -- like Death Cab For Cutie or Metric's former NYC roommates the Yeah Yeah Yeahs -- used their indie success to land major label deals.

Metric, true to form, stuck by their Canadian indie label Last Gang domestically, signed with BSS's label Arts&Crafts in Mexico and as for the rest of the world, including America, they're going it alone. Deciding the old conventional model is not only dead, but never benefited them anyway, Metric reimagined their band as a small business ("Like my brother's record store," enthuses Haines) and launched their own self-financed label, MMI ("Me Myself and I"). With a globally dispersed team, they can now distribute their record without having to sign to someone else's dotted line.

"A lot of people end up compromising by accident," Haines says. "One of the trades-offs with someone making a large investment in you -- which we've never had -- is that they then want a return on their investment. They own your image and can exploit it to the ends of the earth. With Metric, nobody makes those decisions except for us."

"I remember [Broken Social Scene's] Brendan Canning saying, 'we are not going to the next level.' I think that was more about wanting to stay the same. [But] I feel staying still is not an option. If you're staying still than you're actually going back or down. To stay the same you have to keep going forwards," she says.

Whether or not this gamble brings Metric the massive audience their latest opus 'Fantasies' deserves still remains to be seen. But the reenergized band hits the road with newfound purpose, a set-list of arms-up anthems and their career finally, irrevocably, in their own hands.

"To us, this is the next level," Shaw smiles. "It means we are in control and we can guide this ship. I have more faith in us than I do in any label head on earth."

Metric plays Edgefest 2009 in Toronto's Downsview park on June 20.