Metric at 9:30 9/20

Being a huge fan of Metric for a little over a year (after seeing Clean due to my long standing interest in watching everything Maggie Cheung has ever done), but having heard (and liked, but not enough to recognize songs apparently) of the band since a little before Live It Out came out, I had never seen them live. Mainly due to my dislike of going to shows in general, but also because I didn't know anyone who would go with me. But that having been fixed (although not nearly as much as I would have liked), I finally got to see Metric live.

I was not there for the earlier band, Crystal Castles, but that's ok, because I didn't know them at all, and if I have to start liking more bands, it's just going to cut into my time to listen to the bands I like now. Actually, just kidding, I think that this makes them sound like an interesting band, and maybe I should actually spend some time on MySpace. Or maybe I'll just be happy with my huge amount of music blogs and just be slightly annoyed that I missed an opening band that could have been fun. The amount of crappy openers I've seen should give me pause to rush to see a band I'd never heard of before, but then again, I've also seen Spoon, Crooked Fingers (and Eric Bachmann), The White Stripes, The Essex Green, The Black Keys, The National, Smoosh, Portastatic and some others as openers, so who knows what you're going to miss (although really, I had at least heard of almost all of those (besides The White Stripes and The Black Keys, well before they were famous, 1999 and 2003 respectively))?

There was more epileptic-fit-inducing-light-show than I was expecting, but it really added to the atmosphere, along with Emily Haines and her hair/dress, which she used to her advantage quite a bit.

Also, setlist:

Freddy
Twilight
Poster of a Girl
Dead Disco
Joyride
Empty
Standing in Line
Hustle
Combat Baby
Hooks
Handshakes
Rock Me Now
-------------
Monster Hospital
Stadium Love

A little too heavy on the new stuff for me to feel entirely happy with the setlist, as it's very difficult to bounce and sing when you don't know the songs at all. I was also shocked by how early they played Dead Disco. But they did play every song I knew I wanted to hear, so I was pretty happy. Bigger Metric fans than me were alternately slightly disappointed and extremely happy, so I guess I fall in the middle.

And it wouldn't be a concert review without me complaining about someone in the crowd. In this case, the guy was just airdrumming during early songs and constantly crept closer and closer to me until I tapped him on the shoulder during Combat Baby and yelled at him to stop sticking his head in front of mine. After a brief bit of him acting all pissed before he realized I was just trying to be heard over the awesomeness that was Combat Baby, it was all good for the rest of the set.