Metric performs at The Masonic in San Francisco on March 13, 2019. Photos: Joaquin Cabello. SAN FRANCISCO — Toronto indie rock band Metric and Mexico City psychedelic emo rockers Zoé brought their co-headlining tour to The Masonic Wednesday. Metric, led by the charismatic frontwoman Emily Haines, performed songs from its new…

  Coming up on its 20th anniversary, Canada’s veteran electronic pop band Metric takes a sharp turn with its seventh album, Art of Doubt. Emily Haines, Jimmy Shaw and co. trade in their trademark atmospheric keyboards for the fuzzed-out tones of garage rock guitars. The album bursts out of the…

Photos: Alessio Neri OAKLAND — Nineties alt-rock superstars Smashing Pumpkins brought their Shiny Oh So Bright quasi-reunion tour to the Oracle Arena on Monday, with a marathon three-hour setlist that mined the band’s hits, deeps cuts and frontman Billy Corgan’s often idiosyncratic cover song selections. The Pumpkins’ set began with…

Metric, Courtesy. Pros, cons and hindsight, Toronto synth-pop quartet Metric has never shied away from direction-shaping changes. In 2007, the band ditched a traditional label to start their own distribution company. The move paid off two years later when their fourth album, Fantasies, and lead single “Help I’m Alive” charted in…

Metric performs at The Masonic in San Francisco on March 13, 2019. Joaquin Cabello/STAFF. I’ve spoken to Metric’s Emily Haines two or three times in there past seven years. But for their newest album, “Pagans in Vegas,” I interviewed guitarist Jimmy Shaw for the first time. The Toronto band is…

Metric, Courtesy. When Metric singer-keyboardist Emily Haines met legendary crooner and Velvet Underground frontman Lou Reed a few years back, she was star-struck. But Reed was equally impressed with the Toronto alt-rock band’s body of work. Live 105’s Not So Silent Night  6 p.m., Friday, Saturday, Dec. 6-7 Oracle…

Metric performs at The Masonic in San Francisco on March 13, 2019. Joaquin Cabello/STAFF. This story originally appeared in the Oakland Tribune. When Metric was a new band trying to break onto the music scene in the early 2000s, the Toronto troupe needed the kind of exposure that a…