Canadian rock group Metric has premiered the video for their album track “Love You Back” this morning. In the true spirit of Metric, the video is a show of appreciation for the fans who have stuck by them through the years, and consists of a number of fan videos submitted via social media. “It’s addictive to watch,” notes frontwoman Emily Haines, “like a version of Instagram in an alternate reality where people are way less concerned about crafting the perfect image of happiness and instead are just feeling it, and expressing it, for real, IRL.” Watch below.
“Love You Back” is the newest release from the band’s most recent LP, Art of Doubt, out now via MMI/Crystal Math Music. According to Haines, it’s about “making a decision to stop being miserable. We get trapped in past incarnations of ourselves and decide that nothing can ever change. I’ve been held in place with wire and lace and waltzed around the drain. In the tension between a very dull standard of conventional morality and an intense desire to break out of it, our fixed ideas of ourselves and fear of any negative outside perception keep holding us back. What we desperately want is to ditch all that and be free.”
Metric’s seventh LP, released late last year, sees the band take a much chiller approach to their usual synth-rock, but still with the same effervescent miserablism and mystical lyrics they’re known for. Twenty-one years in, the band still has their lively aura, and Haines her mesmerizing voice. Of doing this all a seventh time, Haines says: “I found in the writing of these songs that I was positioning myself as being out in the world in solidarity with the people around me…no matter what’s going on internally or externally, there’s that sense of urgency, of energy. We’re still going to go out, we’re still going to socialize, to push ourselves, we’re still going to celebrate. It’s just going to be dark.”
In celebration of the album, Metric is also scheduled to embark on a co-headlining U.S. tour alongside Mexican rock band Zoé, and fellow Canadians July Talk. The quite thorough 27-city tour begins February 11 in Cleveland, and $1 from each ticket sale will go towards Plus1’s fight against climate change. A full list of dates is available below, and tickets are currently on sale here.
”The only reason we’ve been able to make seven albums… is because of that attitude [of] respect for the listener. The alternative just doesn’t sound like a good time,” Haines and Jimmy Shaw tell Canadian arts outlet q on cbc in a recent interview. We’re glad they’re still having fun.
February 13 – Boston, MA // House of Blues*
February 14 – Philadelphia, PA // The Fillmore*
February 15 – Washington DC // The Fillmore*
February 18 – Brooklyn, NY // Kings Theatre*
February 21 – Richmond, VA // The National†
February 22 – Nashville, TN // Marathon Music Works*
February 24 – Atlanta, GA // Tabernacle*
February 26 – San Antonio, TX // Aztec Theatre*
February 28 – Houston, TX // Revention Music Centre*
March 1 – Dallas, TX // Southside Ballroom*
March 2 – Austin, TX // Moody Theater*
