Metric (The Kool Haus, Feb. 24)

When Metric spent two nights at Madison Square Garden opening for the Rolling Stones last month, guitarist Jimmy Shaw told the National Post last week, the band was sufficiently daunted that the first show was mostly about "trying to not f--- up." But by the second night, Shaw recalled, "it actually felt like a Metric show."

The only surprise is that it took so long.

Place most Canadian indie bands in Toronto's cavernous Kool Haus before a mob of expectant teenagers attracted by heavy rotation on commercial radio and MuchMusic, and they'll look as comfortable as Ashlee Simpson playing to a room of music critics. Give Metric the stage, and the room seems undersized for what they have in store.

Armed with a spiffy new light show, a hit single in Monster Hospital (with another, Poster of a Girl, already threatening to give it a run for its money) and frontwoman Emily Haines' dizzying array of short skirts, the Toronto-based band used the Kool Haus as a launching pad for their most ambitious North American tour yet. And if it took them a few songs to shake off the rust from a brief hiatus, the 2,000-strong on Friday night weren't complaining.

Even at their rustiest, Metric are as professional a live act as this country has - their renditions of studio tracks are note-perfect, a slightly muffled sound mix nothwithstanding. And with a shift from synth-heavy dance-rock to a more guitar-driven sound, their gigs are no longer a one-woman show. While Haines' live-wire persona remains the focal point, Shaw and bassist Josh Winstead have developed a coolly charismatic stage presence of their own.

When they find their groove, though, they're not just slick and professional - they're electric. Midway through Friday night's set, around the point they broke out Monster Hospital, Metric seemed to visibly relax. And with Shaw and Winstead letting their inner rock gods out while Haines strutted the length of the stage in all her fist-pumping, leg-kicking glory, they were soon delivering an arena-size show that would have made the Stones proud.

For the past couple of years, Metric have been rewriting the rules of indie rock - bringing glamour and sex appeal to a genre that typically frowns on both. Only recently, though, have mainstream audiences caught on, and the question heading into the weekend was whether they could match the youthful enthusiasm of recent converts. But that needn't have been a concern: By the time they got to encore fave Dead Disco, complete with Haines sprawled on the stage ad-libbing lyrics, it was the audience struggling to match the band's energy.