About that last one: Metric’s once-in-a-lifetime, top-to-bottom performance of Fantasies last June also stealthily worked in another rare opportunity: opening act Sam Roberts Band, playing their own We Were Born in a Flame (2003) from start to finish.

While merely an opener then, it’s now Sam Roberts and friends’ chance to get in on the act, with their own headlining anniversary tour, showcasing the band’s stellar 2006 album Chemical City. We had a chance to check it out this past weekend at Massey Hall, where a visibly moved Roberts waxed poetic about the passage of time, about his ever-faithful fan base, and about looking ahead (to his next, as-yet unannounced, album).

Chemical City, inspired by the not-exactly-flattering nickname of Sarnia in southern Ontario, grew out of Sam Roberts’s interest in telling a story across a single, ten-track album.

Highlights include Canadian chart-topping singles “The Gate” and “Bridge to Nowhere”, though we’re partial to the expertly-named “An American Draft Dodger in Thunder Bay”, with its tale of a Vietnam War draft dodger. Surprise guests – Dartmouth, Nova Scotia’s own Matt Mays, who (fun fact) actually appeared on a single track on the original Chemical City album; indie rocker Danielle Duval – made for a thrilling and unpredictable evening. The album’s final track, the forlorn ballad “A Stone Would Cry Out”, featured Roberts alone at the keyboard under the spotlight, with gusts of smoke billowing behind him. The audience lapped it up.

Much like Metric’s Fantasies program, Roberts, recognizing the forty-seven minute Chemical City was hardly enough to fill an entire concert, leveraged the moment to launch into a greatest hits assembly of tracks covering nearly a quarter-century of music-making.

Highlights of the concert’s back half included We Were Born in the Flame stalwarts “Where Have All the Good People Gone?”, “Don’t Walk Away Eileen”, and “Brother Down”, alongside “Them Kids” and “Detroit ’67” (the two biggest hits off Love at the End of the World, 2008).

Probably the most exciting moment, however, was Robert’s second-ever performance of a track which just missed the cut on the original Chemical City, and which Roberts has lately introduced into his touring repertoire: the lovely, lyrical, “Fall Before You Finish”.

According to Roberts, the first run at Chemical City’s story generated slightly too many songs to include in the final pressing, and it was with some regret that “Fall” was left out. Here, at Massey Hall, it felt right at home – as did we all.

***

Tickets for the Chemical City Anniversary tour are available here.

The post Sam Roberts Band at Massey Hall (Concert Review) appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

Since that time, Metric has gone on to nerd fame (the aforementioned Scott Pilgrim), tween fame (Metric owning the best track on the Twilight soundtrack), a Cronenberg collaboration (Cosmopolis, marking their second Robert Pattinson-adjacent work), a trophy shelf’s worth of Juno Awards, and a healthy, if probably undervalued, ranking at 41st on Rolling Stone’s list of top Canadian artists.

They’ve also continued to pump out rock solid album after rock solid album, Old World Underground followed by eight more, the most recent being Formentera II (2023), which is overflowing with irresistibly catchy dance-rock tunes.

Last week, Metric graced the stage at hometown venue Budweiser Stage, along with friends Sam Roberts Band and The Dears, for a once-in-a-lifetime performance of Fantasies, their 2009 album which remains one of the defining Canadian rock releases of the 21st century.

The Dears’s six-song opener, all taken from their 2003 hit album No Cities Left, teed up the evening nicely, as Sam Roberts Band and then Metric came on in quick succession to perform complete, top-to-bottom takes, of their most popular albums.

Montreal’s Sam Roberts is arguably underappreciated in the annals of Canadian music history. (He was wrongly left off that Rolling Stone retrospective, for one.)

Friday’s concert saw Roberts and band perform their debut album, We Were Born in a Flame (2003), in its entirety. Containing the bulk of Roberts’s most successful songs, Flame was performed to enthusiastic cheers – and at least one nearby audience member who sang along word for word on every song – including “Brother Down”, “Don’t Walk Away Eileen”, and the eternally popular “Where Have All the Good People Gone?”

Your Toronto Guardian was most thrilled to finally catch Roberts in a performance of Flame’s phenomenal, bilingual “No Sleep”, our favourite track off the album and one that, per setlist.fm, Roberts rarely performs live. While the superfan in us would have appreciated a track or two off later albums – say, “An American Draft Dodger In Thunder Bay” from Chemical City – that’s not so much a weakness as an invitation for Roberts to return to Toronto soon.

Metric knows how to put on a show.

That’s something we’ve known for a while now (their last gig at Budweiser Stage was a highlight of the 2022 concert season), but it’s still impressive how effortlessly they play to a crowd, ramp up excitement, own the stage.

All these years later, Fantasies might be even better than when it debuted, an album that’s aged like fine wine. From its opening number “Help I’m Alive” through the aptly-titled final track “Stadium Love” – sample lyrics, Fight it out to wow the crowd / Guess you thought you could just watch / No one’s gettin’ out / Without stadium love – it’s an album built for big crowds, bigger amps, and epic, chill-inducing moments of rock-and-roll beauty.

There are, in truth, too many highlights from Fantasies to mention, though obvious standouts – “Gold, Gun, Girls”, “Satellite Mind” (with its fantastic, and, unusually for Metric, explicit chorus) – paired Metric’s impeccable musicality with theatrical flourishes making full use of the Stage’s massive screens and lighting systems. Metric diehards may, however, have been disappointed by the omission of the album’s bonus tracks, including the little-known, but, in our opinion, top-tier “Waves”.

Oh, and the best Canadian song of the 21st century also showed up. You know the one.

Fantasies, which runs about 45 minutes, eventually gave way to a sweeping greatest hits set culled from Metric’s other albums. While there were a few notable omissions – come on, no “Combat Baby”? – it’s hard to fault a setlist which includes “Monster Hospital” (Live It Out, 2005), “Dead Disco” (Old World Underground, 2003), “All Comes Crashing” (Formentera, 2022), and the song which we suspect might be Haines’s favourite, “Breathing Underwater” (Synthetica, 2012).

That latter number, which tends to show up as an encore at Metric concerts, is a prime example of the Metric style, with its sweeping, propulsive guitar riff and anthemic chorus. In its slowed down, singalong-friendly version during last week’s concert, it elicited goosebumps (and a sea of glowing phone lights).

Concluding, as they must, with the song that made Envy Adams famous – you also know this one – Metric bowed out on a high note, Haines visibly emotional (in fact, she wiped away tears as she made her final address to the audience), the crowd right there with her.

And as we biked home, we had our own little singalong to ourselves:

Get hot
Get too close to the flame
Wild open space
Talk like an open book
Sign me up
Got no time to take a picture
I’ll remember someday
All the chances we took

We’re so close
To something better left unknown
We’re so close
To something better left unknown
I can feel it in my bones

***

Metric’s latest, characteristically excellent, album Formentera II is available here and everywhere you buy your music.

Sam Roberts Band’s latest The Adventures of Ben Blank is available now.

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