Photo: Press
At this point in their nearly two-decade long career - with six albums, three soundtrack contributions and countless EPs under their belt - Metric are fast approaching 'music veterans' territory. It's a territory in which they're revelling - though with none of the jaded bitterness that so many of their peers have crept towards.
Following on from our album-related chat - which you can catch up with here - we talked to Emily Haines and James Shaw about their feelings on the internet, feminism, and - most importantly - the difference between trolls and gnomes.
Gigwise: You were one of the earlier bands to embrace the internet - but back in 2009, Fantasies leaked online. Has it given you mixed feelings about its worth?
Emily Haines: I'm really torn because I felt like it was super empowering at the beginning, and now I kind of feel like creative people are pretty much screwed by the internet. For writers and musicians, it's kind of like, 'Oh, you're just the thing that's selling everything else.' You are still paying for music, you're just paying somebody else.
I feel a little bit burned, because we were pretty early adopters and really excited about the idea of how it could democratise things for musicians, but... as much as we might like to go back to the 1800s, I think we just can't. We have to stay in it. Which is the feeling [behind] the title of Pagans In Vegas; the idea of like, 'You may wish - and I too share that wish - that we could retreat into some other time that we all imagine was better, when everything was fucking amazing... but we can't retreat, we have to stay in the world that we live in, and somehow realise that we're all shaping the internet.
Another problem people in the public eye have with the internet is how often their words are taken out of context.
EH: The problem with the internet is there is no context. It's actually a total nightmare. Nothing you ever do or say again that is ever captured carries the context with it. I used to be way more outspoken about things, and it's just not worth it to me to bring hellfire upon my family and friends, just to court controversy!
Sometimes it's quite right that an artist should be held to account for something they've said, but often it's just a clickbait quote taken completely out of context.
James Shaw: Why would you ever say anything at all? Controversy is a really healthy part of society, but if you feel so scared to create any sort of controversy because the ramifications could be so intense that you're threatened online all the time. Why would you ever say anything? So the democratisation of the internet has actually created an extremely safe place where nobody can say anything.
EH: Although you do see, to my amazement, people who can't get enough of that. You feel like they wake up in the morning and they spend the whole day just trying to say something to piss people off and get that attention, and everybody falls for it.
JS: Right, and the result is the same. It's the little boy who cried wolf, there's no real conversation happening, because it's either clickbait or silence.
EH: It's true, but I don't have the stomach for that. I'm not gonna start a Twitter war with Taylor Swift, what the hell?
JS: Oh, I actually did that this morning.
EH: Ah, Jimmy! I told you not to!
In some ways, things like Twitter make it easier for artists to directly represent themselves, but I imagine it's easy for you to send something on the spur of the moment, and then regret it.
EH: If we were to physically represent the internet and the behaviour, like take a room, and have people act out what they're doing and saying, it would just be hell. It would just be drunk people like, shouting things.
JS: And the word trolling is extremely misleading, because a troll is like a cute little doll, with the little hair that goes up, I'd love to see a troll - but it actually should be called abuse because that's what it actually is. It's called abusive behaviour, and you should not do it.
EH: You're picturing a gnome.
JS: Oh, am I? Those are sort of trolls too, right? I think gnomes have hats, trolls have hair.
EH: Oh yeah, maybe, maybe. Or maybe it's the other way round...
Watch the first part of Gigwise's interview with Metric below
Emily, you said when you started out, "I was completely limiting myself by thinking that it's superficial to be a woman and wear a fucking skirt." Do you still feel that people react to female musicians differently?
EH: There's a bit of a feeling, for me, for the time-span of my career and what I've witnessed as a woman in music, and very much wanting to participate equally, which in my opinion was as a girl. I'm not being equal by being a guy. But then what's unfolded over the past while is not really that exciting to me. It used to be like, 'Man, where are all the women?' We'd find each other at festivals and I'd meet Kim Gordon and she'd hand the torch, and there's that spirit of solidarity...
I guess it's a genre thing of women in rock, but as it's evolved and pop music has dominated, it's like, oh there's girls! Everywhere. They're just all in their underwear. And it's not giving me the same feeling of being any sort of move forward. It's kind of like, 'Look how empowered you are. You're wearing a G-string on stage.' Now I don't know what do, frankly. Because I am a writer and a musician first. I don't want to be a dude, but I'm not feeling the lingerie look either.
But then there's the sense that women get shamed whether they choose to cover up or not...
EH: I guess it's that thing of like, everybody do whatever anybody wants to feel empowered, I just think it would be cool if you were the most powerful woman in music, or you're getting paid millions of dollars and you're on top of the world, that you felt like you could wear a shirt.
Did you read the story about Chvrches recently? They released the video for 'Leave A Trace', and Lauren Mayberry got sent a link to a 4Chan forum that was calling her a 'slut' and a 'whore', because she has wet hair in the video and a dress. She tweeted it saying, 'If you don't think misogyny exists, then -
EH: This shows you! Yeah. It's true, on the other side, you have this total prudishness. It's like, as a girl, it's your problem that other people can't handle your nipples. It's weird.
JS: For me from the outside, which it would have to be because I'm a man, it just seems to me that if you can make it - and it's a tough line to ride - but if you make it part of your arc, if you can make it part of your statement, what you wear, then it's great, regardless of what it is, whether it's everything or nothing. If it's being used as a way to sell a different statement then it gets really dicey and strange.
EH: We're talking about pop music. A lot of these people - I'm not familiar enough with the music of Chvrches to say where they fall but -
JS: I love that song.
EH: It's good, right? But a lot of people, they've never claimed to be a writer, they never claim to stand for anything, and they're completely allowed to do that.
JS: You don't show up in a sweater if you're trying to be a popstar.
EH: It's true, and these expectations are put on women to represent something, when that's not their thing, they never said they were, you know? Someone like me, it's always been part of what I do, I do feel like I have a role, and it does mean a lot to me that young women find some solace and solidarity with me, but no-one's asking an underwear model to make a statement. If you're a great singer and you want to get up there in your panties, then power to you. Whoever you are, you just gotta be true to that, I guess.
