Results tagged “metric”

"Did they say Joel Plaskett?" Fucked Up frontman Damian Abraham giggled, half-delirious with genuine shock and excitement minutes after he and the rest of the band (drummer Jonah Falco, guitarist Mike Haliechuk, bassist Sandy Miranda, guitarist Josh Zucker, and guitarist Ben Cook) accepted the 2009 Polaris Music Prize for their acclaimed, soaring hardcore epic, The Chemistry of Common Life. The press conference immediately following last night's performance gala and award presentation was full of journalists, but it was oddly silent, maybe because, for the infinite snide opining on the awards' predictability and who really deserved it, no one actually thought Fucked Up would win. Maybe we truly were, as Abraham mocked, all still in shock.

In a change that just might be the culprit for all the Wayfarers, Toronto's film industry is shining brighter than it has in a while. As recently reported by the Star, Filmport, the almost one-year-old megastudio—still only in its first phase of development—is all but completely booked for production on various series, pilots, and feature films, most of them funded by major American studios. Despite in-fighting between the city and its various other studio owners over municipal funding for Filmport, this work is undoubtedly welcomed by the twenty-five thousand professional crew members and ten thousand unionized actors in Toronto.

Isn't a fantasy supposed to be unrestrained? A wondrous, strange imagining? It's doubtful that Metric named their new album, Fantasies, out today on Last Gang, with an intended tongue in cheek, but indeed what we get is a collection of bland, mediocre songs that don't offer anything new and don't really take us anywhere.

Last Thursday night, a lucky few who thoughtfully pre-ordered Metric’s new album filed into a secret show on Queen Street West to get an early taste of what they invested their dollars in. The event's details, aimed to promote the April 7 release of their latest album Fantasies, was kept under wraps until hours before doors opened, but the late notice didn’t prevent the house from filling up with around 150 fans who were willing to cancel their evening plans. The deceptively named Great Hall was actually quite small for the figurative size of the band, but perfect to set the cool, secret vibe of the exclusive show.

It sounds like a hit, and now it looks like one, too: "Gimme Sympathy," one of the better tracks off of Metric's to-be-released Fantasies (you can still listen to the whole album streaming on the band's website), now has a great video to go with a song that may well be the one that finally pushes the band past the tipping point and into the mainstream—a track whose pre-chorus hook is, appropriately, "we're so close to something better left unknown."