The vinyl artwork for Metricâs new album, Formentera, includes a motto that sums up the past few years: This Is What Happened. Itâs an understatement that manages to say everything.
Even real places become imaginary when they are so far out of reach. Named for an idyllic island near Ibiza off the coast of Spain, Formentera is a place that, for Metric, only existed on a page in a âdream destinationsâ travel book that lay open on a deskin the new recording studio that guitarist Jimmy Shaw built in 2020, in a rural hamlet north of Toronto. This is the setting where the bandâs eighth album took shape.
Metricâs sound is both genre-defying and genre-defining. Emily Haines, Jimmy Shaw, bassist Joshua Winstead and drummer Joules Scott Key started playing together in NYC in 2001. They are just getting started.