The Wiltern is an interesting venue, with the back half of the room as standing room, where the audience was bunched up into medium-sized “boxes.” The crowd seemed to mostly be part of a younger audience, and the energy of the night generally felt young.
Photo Credit: Brett Padelford
The night began with a siren-like riff, and a heavy bass that was probably felt through the chest of everyone in the audience through to the back of the room. A V-shaped, pyramid-shaped set of golden lights darted back and cross the stage, shifting patterns throughout different parts of the opening song. Immediately the atmosphere felt to some extent like a rave and a party as much as the usual concert.
The lead singer of The Metric, Emily Haines, stood at the center of the stage with her black dress glittering against the backing lights. She was flanked on both sides by the rest of the band.
The first section of early songs were largely synthesized but the entrance of the electric guitar completely changed the musical atmosphere. Much of the night seemed to jump between the “rave” atmosphere and a typical rock concert atmosphere, and it depended to some degree on the electric guitar’s presence. Unfortunately, it was nearly impossible to make out any lyrics above the literal screech of the siren noise that hung over the song.
The atmosphere felt to some degree like an indoor “rave” with the audience applauding intermittently at changes in the song. Interestingly, with the venue’s inherent lack of drugs and dancing, the performers onstage seemed to inhabit a different universe, where extreme lights and volume flashed and dashed incessantly while the audience largely stood stagnant, although the roaring applause clearly showed their engagement.
In terms of pure talent, Haines showed the ability to carry both the softer, piano-based tunes as well as the loud. This was shown again when Haines sang alone with the guitarist when he began to play the acoustic guitar instead. The acoustic songs were a better measure of their pure songwriting abilities, and exhibited many of the same features of the full band songs.
The electric guitar intro, and extensive feature in the song “Gold Guns Girls.” Released in 2010, the sound differs a fair amount from the more synth-based songs, that probably were written recently. Nonetheless, the sound is similar enough to appear to be a “signature” sound.
The guitar solo, however, was clearly performed with technical expertise which is expected, but seemed to lack subtlety and emotional content. Instead, it seemed to be performed as a showpiece as opposed to notes being played as a form of honest self-expression.
Beyond the music, the backing color schemes played a large part in the experience. Each song seemed to have a different backing color scheme, sometimes decorated with different shapes and patterns in the background as well.
The performer-audience dynamic seemed to almost be one in which the band is enjoying playing the song and trying to get the audience to dance, as if they were a wallflower at the party. Much of this is a result of the singer’s dancing alone to the song and looking around to members from every part of the audience.
By the middle of the performance, there were probably hundreds of cell phones raised up to record the performance. Both the music itself and the event is hard to place, as it is again somewhat between a rock concert and a rave.
A couple of images can encapsulate the show. One is a young child apparently here with a parent closer to the front row of the stage with headphones over his head, at the same moments that pant legs in the audience were trembling from the bass projected from the stage a couple hundred feet away.
The style of music is one that might have been almost designed for “grooving” along to. The truth is, if one is not physically moving along to the beat, a large part of the engagement is lost.
Many of the guitar solos were defined by the effects/pedal/aesthetic, which left less room to hear the emotional nuance and emotional content contained in the song. The guitar solos felt somewhat similar to other bands in the genre, demonstrating obvious technique but was not necessarily memorable in terms of being unique.
A commonality in much of the music was that it was very “straight” in that there were relatively few musical nuances, in volume, tempo, within and between different songs. Instead, the music kept a consistent energy up that the audience seemed to enjoy.
The electric guitarist, Shaw, spent many years in classical music, which can be noted in the technical ability displayed by the performance. However, it’s not clear if the classical training’s probable emphasis on technique translated completely with the rest of the band in terms of creating a more emotionally nuanced sound.
In general, the experience and tightness of the band is unsurprising if the group was in fact formed in 1998 as suggested online. It was a night that the audience enjoyed, defined largely by a consistent intensity of energy and volume onstage, even if the venue did not seem perfectly suited for the audience to fully move along.
Photo Credit: Brett Padelford
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