“I was a starving artist, but I was fearless.” —‘Victim Of Luck’
The past is viewed not only by those who lived it but also by those who wish they had. The people who were there and are looking back fondly can feel nostalgic, but it is the next generation that is able to romanticize it best. On Metric’s debut album Old World Underground, Where Are You Now we have a young Emily Haines wandering the streets of New York City in 2003 looking for traces of her parents’ Greenwich Village or a portal to Lou Reed’s Lower East Side. And if you’re a kid in 2026, there is nothing that better symbolizes the gritty glamour of being in an indie rock band with your friends than the chaos and possibility of the early-2000s music scene.
This relationship between now and then is what makes Metric’s tenth album, Romanticize The Dive, such a triumph. “We wanted to reunite the team that made our albums Fantasies and Synthetica to reclaim our sound and to own it,” lyricist and vocalist Emily Haines explains.
In order to accomplish this sonic and thematic time travel, the band went back to the place where they met in 2001: New York City at the height of its indie-rock explosion. “Returning to Electric Lady to start the recordings was the first step,” says Metric co-founder, guitarist, synth guru and producer Jimmy Shaw. “I called Gavin Brown to co-produce with me, I called John O’Mahoney and asked him to come back into the fold and mix this album as only he can, and I had Liam O’Neil by my side holding together the whole production. I mean, this was the dream team that gave us ‘Help I’m Alive’ and ‘Breathing Underwater’ and ‘Black Sheep.’ I missed working with these guys. It was really intense being together again after all these years, but I listen to ‘Tremolo’ and it gives me shivers. The result is everything.”
Metric is Emily Haines (vocals, keys), Jimmy Shaw (producer, guitar, keys), Joshua Winstead (bass guitar, keys) and Joules Scott Key (drums). They have spent over 20 years together in creative partnership. So even with the production side filled with a cast of characters from the past the four original band members are very much living in the present.
Instead of trying to reinvent their signature indie dance rock sound that has inspired countless other acts over the past two decades, on Romanticize The Dive the band leaned into their personal histories to create something that resonated with them in the current moment. “We’ve made nine other albums and gone through so many phases where we were exploring and being influenced by other things,” says Haines. “This time around, whenever we hit a wall in the studio we would reference our own material and ask, ‘What would Metric do?’ and let that guide us.” Also adding an intentional twist to the writing process, Haines and Shaw didn’t listen to each other’s song ideas prior to entering the studio, which was a first. This allowed songs like ‘Crush Forever’ to burst onto the scene unexpectedly; Haines calls that song, “my love letter to every hot girl causing trouble in a little black dress.” Jimmy presented the music to Emily and she wrote the lyrics as a passing of the torch to the next generation of girls: “Have the best but don’t be had, don’t be scared of pain, you’ll bounce right back, much stronger, sweeter than before, that’s us, go crush, go get what’s yours.”
Featuring all the elements of Metric songs that fans have come to love – an undeniable vocal hook, an inventive arrangement, a dynamic beat and a disarming vulnerability – ‘Tremolo’ sounds both fresh and familiar. “I found a probably dangerous apartment in Mexico City where the door didn’t lock but it had this very special piano that gave me the beginnings of ‘Tremolo’ as a slow, moody dirge,” Haines explains, adding that Shaw helped transform it into the pop gem that you hear on Romanticize The Dive. “I think of ‘Tremolo’ as an essential anchor piece that came out of that first session at Electric Lady,” Shaw says.
That synergistic spirit is evident on the album opener ‘Victim Of Luck,’ which sets us up for a wild ride with the line, “Let me take you back, it was the start of something,” and sees Haines dropping the mask of self-consciousness and vanity. “It was a long journey to get out of my own way and I wanted this song to be a rallying cry for that,” she explains. “From the start, we knew ‘Victim Of Luck’ had to open the album,” Shaw says of the first single, which features shimmering synths and a timeless sensibility that would sit comfortably beside an MGMT banger from 2007. “We wanted the first sound you hear to reassure you that you’re about to have a really good time listening to this entire album from the top, and that song gets you there very quickly.”
The same can be said of ‘Time Is A Bomb,’ a fast driving ode to the pressures of mortality. Haines wrote the song after the album was complete, but the band couldn’t resist making a late addition. “It’s about how time is flying so you’ve got to get over yourself and be brave, flirt with disaster. Whatever time you have left, enjoy it because this is it, this is your happily ever after.” Haines says.
One of the reasons why Metric are able to honor their past so effectively on Romanticize The Dive is because they never left. Instead of swapping members or resigning themselves to the album anniversary tour circuit, Metric have never stopped their creative collaboration. “It’s a really weird thing to say, but the fact the band never broke up is the reason we’re together,” Shaw says, adding that having the members all live in different cities has allowed them to appreciate the time they have together. You can hear that joy pulsing through the album: From the soaring melodies of ‘Loyal’ to the psychedelic-tinged guitar riff grandeur of the album closer, ‘Leave You On A High,’ there’s a palpable sense of lightness that can only be recognized by experiencing adversity together and making it out the other side. Maybe not unscathed, but undeterred.
“This album is about the romance of a less than perfect life. Yes we were broke and we were playing to ten people and there was nothing for us to fall back on but we refused to give up. You can be as much a victim of good luck as bad” Haines explains. “It’s not as though we’re all superstar billionaires now, but that was never what we were after. What we wanted is what we have. That’s what we’re celebrating, because as it turns out, the grind is the thing you wouldn’t trade and the bonds you made can’t be faked. We dedicated our lives to each other and it’s the best feeling in the world.”
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