Indie
Live Review: Metric revisit their London past in moving acoustic set
Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw strip things back for a tender, spontaneous set ahead of new album Romanticize the Dive
Metric’s return to London came not with the usual blast of synths and stadium‑sized indie rock, but with something far more intimate.
Ahead of their tenth album Romanticize the Dive, the Canadian band stepped into Rough Trade East for a stripped‑back set that felt less like a promotional stop and more like a quiet reunion with the people who have carried their music for two decades.
With only Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw onstage, the performance unfolded with a looseness that made the room feel like a rehearsal space the audience had been invited to witness.
Haines, alternating between keys and mic, let the songs breathe in a way Metric rarely allow on their bigger tours.
Shaw’s guitar lines acted as the spine, giving the set a raw, unvarnished edge.
The seven‑song run blended old favourites with glimpses of the new record.
Gimme Sympathy and Help I’m Alive — both from 2008’s Fantasies — landed with a clarity that comes only from years of living inside a song.
Stripped of their usual punch, they felt newly exposed, their emotional weight somehow heavier.
Haines paused before Help I’m Alive to recall the uncertainty she’d felt when writing it, admitting she hadn’t known whether the band would survive that period.
Hearing it in such a small room made that confession hit harder.
One of the night’s standout moments came with Crush Forever, a new track Haines dedicated “to all the young girls who have fallen in love desperately and fearlessly.”
It was delivered with the kind of tenderness that suggests Romanticize the Dive may be one of Metric’s most personal albums yet.
Between songs, Haines drifted into memories of her early London years — living in a loft on Charlotte Road, surrounded by easels, long before Shoreditch became the postcode it is now.
She laughed: “The flat went from being £80 a week to £350 a week when we took it over, which is, like, hilariously cheap now.”
The nostalgia wasn’t forced; it felt like she was reconnecting with a version of herself that still lingers somewhere in the city.
What stood out most was how comfortable she seemed.
Even without the full band, Haines remained magnetic — a reminder of why she’s one of alternative rock’s most distinctive frontwomen. The millennials who once discovered Metric on MySpace or late‑night music TV looked on with the kind of affection that only comes from growing up alongside a band.
In a venue barely big enough to hold a few hundred people, Metric proved they don’t need volume or production to command a room.
They’ve lasted because they’re still impossible to pin down — still sharp, still searching, still unmistakably themselves.
And for anyone who first found them as a teenager, it felt like being reintroduced to an old friend who hasn’t lost their spark.
Rating: 8.5/10
