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Music

Metric’s Emotional “Dressed to Suppress” Is a Riff-Heavy Ride

The Toronto band interrogates the foils of social performance and playing it fake when it comes to love.

French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent once said, “Fashions fade; style is eternal.” Pretty sure he was talking about pants and stuff, but the same logic can be applied to everlasting social and emotional suppression. The latest video for "Dressed To Suppress" by Toronto’s Metric touches on these themes as singer Emily Haines rips us apart with her vocal performance. The song is from Metric’s forthcoming, as of yet untitled, 12-song album. It will be the group’s seventh album, bringing the sounds of Haines (vocals), James Shaw (guitarist), Joshua Winstead (bassist) and Joules Scott-Key (drums) together to tackle other topics like political anxiety and dystopian nightlife with new-wave, pop-rock moods. “We reach for the things we idolize/ Other things are just for show,” Haines sings on “Dressed to Suppress.”

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Metric described the track in a written statement like this: “Lyrically, the song explores the maze of conflicts we encounter in our attempts at finding and holding onto love; the absurd mating rituals we routinely perform; and the vast divide between the desires our appearances can imply and the way we actually feel inside. Sonically, it’s one of the most intense songs on the album. We’re already playing it live and it’s getting stronger every night. The contrast between the delicate, dreamy opening and the heavy riffs of the verse and chorus match the dramatic emotional shifts we all go through when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, the push and pull of retaining our own identities in love.” Watch “Dressed to Suppress” above.

Devin Pacholik is dressed for recess on Twitter.