Venue: Esplanade Concert Hall, Singapore
Date: 31st July 2012
Promoter: Greenhorn Productions
Review by: Nadiah H.
Special Thanks: Sylvia & the Greenhorn Productions team
“I’m just as fucked up as they say,” echoed the walls of the Esplanade Concert Hall with Emily Haines providing the vocals for the beautifully haunting song “Artificial Nocturne”. Singapore was the only Asian stop for Metric as they headed from Australia to Lollapalooza to promote the release of their latest album Synthetica. Being only a casual fan, I wasn’t expecting much from the night except sing-alongs to my favourite songs. However, as I saw the outstretched hands of eager fans, reaching for the band and heard Haines’ powering vocal chords as she sang “Youth Without Youth”, I knew this night was going to be special. The entire floor turned from a seated arena to metrical mayhem.
Metric drew their set list primarily from Synthetica, providing the audience with fist pumping “Speed The Collapse” and a thumping paranoia version of “Breathe Underwater”. What I was more intrigued by was the stage performance each band member had. Emily, with her appealing stage effervescence, Jimmy and Joshua pleasing the crowd with their mad guitar skills, and Joules smashing away behind the drums in oblivion. For a band that has been together for 10 years, these musicians sure haven’t lost their tempo.
Crowd favourites like “Help I’m Alive” and “Dead Disco” from their previous albums left the whole venue in screaming flames. It doesn’t even matter what floor tier you were on, everybody was standing, dancing and singing-along. The band ended their main set with “Stadium Love” leaving the crowd dying for more.
The audience did the usual chants for an encore and Metric returned to the stage with “Monster Hospital” and “Gold Guns Girls”. Both songs were heavily celebrated and came across as the most obscure pieces in their set. Emily wasn’t much of a crowd communicator up till the end when she told the crowd how blessed she was to still be standing on stage with the band even after so long. Winstead and Scott-Key were seen leaving the stage so that Haines and Shaw could perform an acoustic and raw version of “Gimme Sympathy,” just his guitar and her voice. Them, playing that rendition in a concert hall with killer acoustics and the whole audience singling along to every word left me in tears. That was such a beautiful moment and the perfect ending to such a remarkable night.