BP Arts Média 
Some concerts are simply nostalgic, and some are a welcome reminder that the things you loved twenty years ago not only hold up, but are still alive and well. On Wednesday, October 7, 2026, Metric brought their All the Feelings Tour to a close at Place Bell in Laval alongside fellow Canadian indie institutions Stars and Broken Social Scene, turning the evening from your standard three-part spectacle into a joyful return to the early-2000s indie canon, celebrating the friendships, collaborations and creative spirit of a scene that has never stopped evolving.
Stars Sets the Tone with Emotion and Nostalgia
Montreal’s own Stars set the tone with their emotionally charged indie pop, weaving melancholy melodies and propulsive crescendos around Amy Millan’s unmistakable vocals. From the aching familiarity of Elevator Love Letter to the communal singalong of Your Ex-Lover Is Dead, their set was packed with enduring songs the crowd was eager to sing back. They also paid tribute to their friend and late concert photographer Susan Moss, bringing a tender moment of remembrance to an evening otherwise brimming with life.
Broken Social Scene: A Joyful Musical Reunion
Then, Broken Social Scene took over. At times, the sprawling collective numbered fifteen musicians, absolutely flooding the stage with movement as members of Stars and Metric joined the fray alongside the formidable horn section Kevin Drew dubbed the “High School Horns.” The result was gloriously unruly yet remarkably cohesive: blaring brass, wiry guitar riffs and hypnotic crescendos that transformed songs like 7/4 (Shoreline) and Hug of Thunder into something almost communal.
Watching the musicians dance, egg one another on and hype up the crowd felt like a marriage between the camaraderie of the coolest and most talented high-school band kids and the unbridled optimism of summer camp. Their instrumental interludes were exhilarating, occasionally overwhelming, and all the better for it.
The emotional centrepiece arrived with Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl. Metric’s Emily Haines joined Amy Millan and the others onstage, lending her ethereal voice to a song that has become an anthem for generations of indie kids. Haines reflected that, although it had been written more than two decades earlier on a frigid Toronto night, it felt as though it had been written for that very evening. Under the lights, the sentiment landed beautifully on the mesmerized audience of devotees. The set also reached beyond Toronto’s indie-rock lineage, with a dedication to Montréal’s Godspeed You! Black Emperor and a nod to Feist.
The connection between these bands runs much deeper than a handful of guest appearances. Haines, Millan and Drew have known one another since their school days in Toronto. Their overlapping musical histories helped shape the city’s indie-rock community, and on this tour, those connections felt less like lore and more like a palpable kinship.
Metric Delivers Power, Precision and Raw Emotion
Closing the night, Metric brought the arena-ready punch that has long set them apart: angular guitars, propulsive drums, insistent electronic rhythms and Haines’ soaring, ethereal vocals. Newer material like Crush Forever sat comfortably in their setlist alongside classics like Gimme Sympathy and Gold Guns Girls.
Haines’ reminder that “punk is a state of mind. A willingness to take risks and challenge the establishment. Not simply a f***ing jacket” felt particularly fitting. A stripped-back Tremolo offered a moment of reflection before Synthetica, bolstered by the returning musicians and horns, reignited the room.
Haines has a particular kind of magic onstage: impossibly cool one moment and tender and relatable the next, she has a way of making an arena feel strangely intimate, pulling the crowd into her orbit with every chorus. She is, and always has been, a joy to watch.
Joined onstage by friends old and new, Metric delivered a frenetic, punk-as-f*** performance that married razor-sharp precision with raw power and pointed social commentary. Their anthemic riffs hit hard, driven by pleading drum fills punchy enough to propel the crowd out of its seats. They closed out the main set with my own favourite fight song, Combat Baby.
By the time the band tore through Help I’m Alive and Black Sheep in the encore, the crowd was euphoric: dreamy, dazed, dancing, and basking in the afterglow of an evening of Canadian indie excellence.
A Celebration of Canadian Indie Music
For all its nostalgia, the night never felt trapped in the past. It felt like a celebration of the friendships, collaborations and restless creative spirit that helped define a generation of Canadian music, and of the people still carrying that spirit forward.
Tala Mukaddam | Journaliste
Tala Mukaddam est une journaliste, créatrice de contenu et professionnelle des communications numériques basée à Montréal, passionnée de musique, de cinéma et de récits documentaires. Elle a un faible assumé pour le skate punk des années 2000, le ska et le Midwest emo. Elle écrit sur ses passions avec curiosité, cœur et le panache d’une conteuse.
