Got to the Newport way too early. I assumed with doors at 7 that the music would start at 8 and there'd be at least one opening band. Walked around the place and didn't find a single person I knew. Finally saw Leslie James and asked her if there was an opening band. "I don't know." Okay...

Leslie gets on stage about 30 minutes later and says Metric will be up soon. Odd. No opener, not even a local band hoping to be massively exposed. Metric takes the stage. Emily's wearing this sparkly mini-dress and she's energetic and bouncing around. The band sticks mostly to the latest record and dispenses with the tune 75% of the crowd had come to hear ("Help, I'm Alive") fairly early in the set.

I would have preferred to hear more songs from Live It Out, like "Patriarch on a Vespa" and "Poster of a Girl", but they did do a prolonged, dynamic version of "Empty" which was the highlight of the show. I also liked the quieter version of "Live It Out" for an encore. They didn't do "Combat Baby", which surprised me, but then I didn't miss the song all that much.

Emily seems a bit kooky, especially when she stopped a couple times to ramble to the crowd. It's like she's Cat Power on better meds.

Another oddity: No merch for sale. Nothing.

$5 to get in. $10 on beer. Home before the 11 o'clock news. Win - win - win.

Metric are pretty darn good live.

The no merch thing was weird. You think a band playing a $5 sold out show could benefit from some merch.

Pictures, courtesy of Jagrap on flickr:

The slowed down version of "live it out" was pretty awesome. I never really liked that song until last night.

Didn't expect it, but was crossing my fingers for "police and the private"....didn't play it.

That's like hoping for "pearly" at a radiohead show.

CW's photos from the May 2010 show:

http://www.donewaiting.com/2010/06/30/p ... -columbus/

I was confused by the 'no opener' 'no merch' comments because I thought this thread was about the May 2010 show. I won tix to this through their mailing list. Anyways, yes Emily is a bit kooky. Her moves on stage kind of remind me of the Seinfeld episode where no one can tell Elaine that she can't dance. They are pretty good live though, I enjoy the guitar player most of the time.