Metric Measures the Past
Emily Haines talks indie sleaze, ownership, and revisiting the band's origin story without getting stuck in it.
By Madeline Lines
Photo by Mark Hunter (@thecobrasnake)
- Published on
Metric aren’t above looking back at the 2000s and 2010s scenes that shaped them — just don’t call it nostalgia. Call it Romanticize the Dive, the title of their upcoming 10th album, one that reaches back in time to grab the hand of their debut to give it a little squeeze.
Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? dropped in 2003, a title nodding to years of Haines wandering the streets of Toronto, then New York City, chasing breadcrumb trails of an idealized past. The catchy, synth-pop sound stuck in your head like a wad of gum to the shoe. Haines was pounding pavement looking for Lou Reed, Sonic Youth — and now, two decades later, the next generation is out looking for her.
“It’s just the way that time layers back – that now, there are people looking at 2003 like that was the magic time that they’re now nostalgic about,” says Haines.
Metric was there in early Cobrasnake photos that felt so alive and raw you’d swear the camera itself had pores, beading with sweat. They were even living in dirty Brooklyn garages, cross-pollinating with members of groups like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Strokes. The band is having fun returning to that time, now — taking new photos with the iconic photographer, digging up old camcorder videos blitzed together to accompany the single “Victim of Luck.”
“I had one shirt and a skirt,” Haines remembers. “I would wear it every time, wash it in the sink in the bedroom, hang it out the window, and put it on again. It was almost like the more drenched in sweat we got, the freer that we and everyone in the crowd felt.”
Years later, Haines and guitarist Jimmy Shaw, bassist Joshua Winstead and drummer Joules Scott-Key have returned to the scene of the indie sleaze crime to record their latest album at Electric Lady. Over two decades of collaboration has solidified a rhythm of trust in their music-making dynamic.
“We play the game called ‘destroy the ego.’ And we play for keeps. You put yourself on the line,” says Haines, of their songwriting process. “The definition of ‘good’ for us is that we don’t know until we hear it and feel it. And we don’t tend to disagree at that point.”
The resulting Greenwich Village-born album feels like a poignant trip back in time sonically, and lyrically. A conversation with a past self. After 9/11 had rocked the Meet Me in the Bathroom scene of early 2000s New York, young Metric left and took a beat back in Toronto. It was through meeting up with Haines’ old high school friend Kevin Drew that Broken Social Scene was born.
“It was like, we’d love to hang out with you guys, drink a beer, but we’re Metric and nothing’s going to change that,” Haines says. She and Shaw were able to straddle being oft-members of the changing, sprawling cast of the aptly named Social Scene while keeping their own project first priority. Although it was her voice cooing on the iconic BSS track “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl.”
“The male press at the time liked the girl who was singing ‘used to be one of the rotten ones’ all soft,” says Haines. “But they were definitely like ‘Metric is too much.’ So I’ve always been like, suck it up, motherfucker.”
Listening to Haines trace those early days — where they moved, who they met, how they navigated being a fledgling baby band — it’s clear they weren’t afraid to push back, even from the get-go, to elbow out their own shape in the world.
“We said ‘no’ to a lot of things. We said no to big record deals. I said no to reverb on my vocals on Old World, which I really laugh about now, but think is cool,” says Haines. “We also said no to people owning the rights to a lot of our music, which puts us in a really good position now. So it’s actually only recently that I’ve started saying ‘yes’ more.”
Joining the lineup with Stars and Broken Social Scene for an of-the-moment nostalgia reunion tour was a recent big “yes.” The very millennial-titled “All The Feelings” tour will make its way across the U.S., Canada, and Europe in Summer and Fall 2026. It’s almost a micro high school reunion for Haines, who also grew up with Amy Millan of Stars.
While the trend cycle, the tour, and the latest album have Metric positioned in a backwards glance, Haines is still the biggest fan of the present moment. A lot of the album’s content grapples with “how to exist as a woman who’s not 20, in a culture obsessed with that,” while still paying her respects to her 20 year old self.
Haines recalls how when she was younger, her brother told her Patti Smith had said something about how every time she’s onstage, Smith either orgasms or pisses her pants. This is an ethos young Emily took very much to heart — and now has decades of hard-earned experience in.
Imagining her in the crowd for this summer’s tour, tracing 35 years of interwoven threads and coexisting visions, Haines knows what that girl might say.
“I want to be them.”
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