Noel Gallagher performs with the High Flying Birds at Concord Pavilion in Concord, Calif. on June 6, 2023. Nate McKinley/STAFF. CONCORD, Calif. — It was “Garbage” written at the top of the marquee, but Tuesday’s concert at Concord Pavilion may as well have been a double bill as Shirley…

Emily Haines and Metric, courtesy. Indie rock band Metric has just completed the Canadian leg of its tour in support of new album, Formentera, and with a U.S. tour start looming, vocalist Emily Haines and her bandmates are back in their new woodsy studio, “because we’re lunatics.” Metric 8…

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…

SAN FRANCISCO — Metric frontwoman Emily Haines‘ inner monologue would probably get along with Chance the Rapper’s. On his previous tour, in 2016 and earlier this year, Chance would speak to a puppet lion that at times acted the part of supportive friend and at others a detractor, questioning…

After a seven-year hiatus, Broken Social Scene is back with new album Hug of Thunder. The Canadian collective is as famous for their sprawling, emotional, baroque-pop as their ability to swell from 10 to 19 members onstage, at any given show. These days, they continue to grow concomitantly off-stage as well. Broken…

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…

M83 performs at the Fox Theater in Oakland on April 17, 2016. I probably went to more shows this year than ever before. This year, artists such as Florence and the Machine, Coldplay, the Black Keys, Of Monsters and Men and the reunited Garbage didn’t even crack the ranks…