Chris DeLine

For Toronto’s Metric, the road to this year’s Glastonbury festival in the U.K. leads right through the Twin Cities. Touring in support of their fourth album, this year’s Fantasies, Metric are receiving some of their greatest accolades as they continue across the U.S. Having gone gold in its native Canada, Fantasies has already spawned four singles, including the recently released fuzzy post-wave track, “Sick Muse.” While the video for the song is fairly basic—it depicts the band playing in front of a white screen—it captures the charisma of lead singer Emily Haines. The bare-bones nature of the video goes a long way toward representing the creation of the album as well. The record was initially scrapped after the songs were tested in a live setting, but then they were rebuilt from the ground up. Though Haines and guitarist James Shaw are also members of the brilliant Broken Social Scene, Metric has served as their main outlet for over a decade. The band has received numerous honors in the past, including multiple Juno Award (the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy) nominations, and its 2005 album, Live It Out, was nominated for the esteemed Polaris Music Prize. Sebastien Granger will open. 

[This critics’ pick was originally published by City Pages.]