Metric and Broken Social Scene Bring the ‘All the Feelings’ Tour to the Aragon Ballroom

Jul 26

By Colette Custin Bevard

Chicago's Byline Bank Aragon Ballroom lived up to its reputation as a place built for spectacle Friday night, hosting Metric alongside Broken Social Scene and Stars for the All The Feelings Tour. The bill itself felt like a family reunion of sorts- three bands whose histories tangle together going back to Toronto in the late '90s- and the shared lineage showed in how loose and generous each set felt, less like a stack of openers and more like old friends trading the stage.

Metric opened with "Victim of Luck," the reflective lead single off their new record Romanticize the Dive, before easing into a run of older favorites that had the floor moving early- "Combat Baby" and "Gold Guns Girls" back to back felt like a dare, and the crowd took it. Emily Haines commanded the room the way she always does: equal parts detached cool and full-body abandon, prowling the stage between her keyboard rig and the mic stand. "Youth Without Youth" landed as an emotional high point of the main set, while "Help I’m Alive"- still one of their most recognizable songs to casual fans- pulled the loudest singalong of the night. They closed with "Black Sheep," fitting for a band that's spent two decades asking a crowd to feel something with them and is still getting the answer.

Stars opened the night as a quieter, more chamber-pop counterpoint to what was coming and a set that leaned into their gift for aching, orchestral hooks and gave the room time to settle in before things picked up. Broken Social Scene followed with their usual sprawl, cycling through a rotating cast on stage and building the kind of loose, horn-and-guitar-heavy wall of sound that's always made them feel more like a collective than a band.