Q&A with Metric’s lead vocalist Emily Haines

Metric, which consists of lead vocalist Emily Haines and band members Jimmy Shaw, Joshua Winstead and Joules Scott Key, won the 2013 Juno Award for best alternative album of the year. Through the fall, Metric will be touring with Paramore and will be performing at Memorial Hall tonight for a show presented by Cat’s Cradle.

Haines spoke with staff writer Kristin Tajlili about the current tour and the evolution of their music.

Daily Tar Heel: On your website, it says you have been touring with Paramore. What has it been like?

Emily Haines: We just started touring with them a week ago. They’re very sweet people, but we’re still settling in. The days are pretty full, so we don’t get to hang out with them as much as you would think. But it’s been great.

DTH: Are you planning on collaborating with Paramore?

EH: I have no idea. We’ve been touring through Asia, Australia and New Zealand. We have Thanksgiving Day off, but we’ll be flying the next day. So we’re really immersed into the music and into making the most beautiful musical experience we can.

DTH: How has the image of the band evolved over time, and how do you think it will evolve in the future?

EH: Ever since we started, it’s been really just a matter of what sounds great to us, and it’s not always about what’s popular. Now that it’s five years later, I think we’ve really expanded. It just what happens to be what’s in that moment. It’s just one microphone in a room as we happen to be recording live on the floor in Live it Out, and in Synthetica we’re trying to evoke much more of the imaginary place. We just kind of obey what feels right to us. We’ve been fortunate enough that people seem to like it. Hopefully that will continue to be the case.

DTH: Were there any specific things you wanted to do for your most recent album Synthetica that you didn’t get into Fantasies?

EH: You go into it with everything. You give it everything, and you create it and wait and see what you end up with. We didn’t purposefully want it to be like Fantasies or unlike Fantasies, but it kind of seems like a natural graduation from there. That’s the great thing about what we do: We can take it one step at a time and see what feels right.

DTH: What are some of the risks you enjoy taking in your music?

EH: There’s nothing to back us up. There’s no company. There’s nothing — just the fact we’ve been playing shows and people come to these shows. We try to make our records as beautiful as possible in our own studio with our work. The whole thing is a risk. I feel like what we do is a great adventure. There’s no way to predict the world in any time of history. The world is constantly changing, but we try to stay inside the music and ignore all the other shit.

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