Metric and Most Serene Republic

metric
Originally uploaded by squidpants.

so I went to see Metric and Most Serene Republic at the 9:30 Club tonight. I've always heard Metric was good in concert, and Most Serene Republic has a pretty great band name. Metric didn't disappoint, but Most Serene Republic were pretty bad. I sort of liked their songs on their website, but they're very annoying performers. I get the feeling the band has been friends since 4th grade, and they're those annoying kind of friends who have all these exclusive hilarious inside jokes. They probably name their little group with some clever name like "the Salon" or an acronym of their first names. The lead singer was a spazz who sort of looked like me, but I hope I am not anywhere as annoying as he is. The rest of the band (except for the girl guitarist) rocked out way too much, to music that really didn't lend itself to rocking out. Music wise, I guess you could say they are a noisy, Canadian version of Architecture in Helsinki, which means they are sort of too cutesy and have twice as many band members as they need. They seemed like pretty good musicians, the drummer especially seemed to be a good drummer, but didn't ever play a regular beat, he just sort of banged stuff. I wish they'd go back to San Marino. But enough with the harsh review. Because Metric was great. They were tight and catchy, and the sound was booming, the bass was really shaking me. They also had a good light show going on, which wasn't over the top and really complimented them well. Emily Haines, the lead singer, she's a really good, likable frontwoman, or whatever you call female frontman. She danced around and made poses and has a great voice, pretty much the opposite of the Most Serene Republic frontman. The rest of the band were fun to watch as well, and were solid perfomers. You could tell they'd been doing this for awhile, and they sounded great. They tore the place apart during "Combat Baby," which I guess is their biggest hit song, and the encore was probably the best encore I've ever seen, it was a lot more hypnotic and swirling than the rest of the set. I feel like a lot of bands play one big song and sort of phone it in during the encore, but they were spectacular. I only knew maybe two or three of their songs, and still thought they were great. My pal Rae saw them a few days ago and has better photos and a video too.