Sure it is always an honor to be nominated, but at this point Metric have got to be jonesing for a win. One of Canada's top alt-rock acts, the quartet's fourth full-length, "Fantasies," was shortlisted for this year's Polaris Music Prize (Canada's version of the U.K.'s Mercury Prize), but the band left its late September gala ceremony empty handed. "Live It Out" (2005) received a Polaris nod too, and that plus 2003's "Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?" were both up for the Juno Award (Canada's Grammy Awards) for Alternative Album of the Year, but alas they lost those as well. And while a trophy or two would be nice, the fact that all three records have gone gold in their homeland is likely somewhat of a consolation.
Metric was formed by vocalist and keyboardist Emily Haines and guitarist James Shaw in the late 1990s. The duo's participation in Broken Social Scene, a collective of Canadian musicians whose 2002 breakthrough, "You Forgot It in People," was met with global fanfare, created anticipation for "Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?" and pushed Metric to the forefront of the country's burgeoning indie scene. A pair of opening slots for The Rolling Stones at the iconic Madison Square Gardens in 2006 and appearances at events such as California's Coachella and the U.K.'s Reading and Leeds festivals solidified an international following for their new-wave-accented pop-rock.
Released in April, "Fantasies" has already spawned four singles, with lead cut "Help I'm Alive" charting on U.S. commercial radio. Currently plugging the album in Australia at the Parklife festival, Metric will visit Japan in October for the first time since playing 2005's Tokyo Canada Wet concert. They will end the year with a cross-country tour of their native land. Several of those dates are already sold out. All 2,700 tickets for their performance at Toronto's Massey Hall were purchased in a mere 15 minutes.