Tubeway army

Kids get off on Metro Station’s synth-punk-pop

MIND THE GAP: Metro Station

by ERIK LEIJON

Punk fans, dance fans, lend me your ears. All the cool kids are putting aside their wardrobe differences and boarding the synth-punk pop express that is Metro Station. The Los Angeles quartet is the musical equivalent of a truck filled with Patrick Nagel paintings and Postal Service records crashing into a Hot Topic store. The group, writers of the omnipresent summer smash “Shake It,” are a series of contradictions to anachronistic music types, but represent stylistic iconoclasts to a tween generation whose iPods don’t discriminate against musical genres.

For instance, despite mixing punk with dance and having no qualms writing highly sexualized lyrics, founding members Trace Cyrus and Mason Musso originally met through their mothers on the set of Hannah Montana, where their thespian/multimedia-conglomerate siblings worked—Miley Cyrus and Mitchell Musso, respectively.

“It’s a weird way to meet a friend and a band member at the same time,” ponders Cyrus, who along with Musso is still in his teens. “It was the first time I went to hang out with my sister on set that Mason came down, and that weekend I spent the night at his house, where we recorded our first song.”

When the group, rounded out by synth player/beat maker Blake Healy and drummer Anthony Improgo, started releasing songs on their MySpace page, the positive reaction from record labels was instantaneous, despite the suits being none the wiser about the duo’s famous connections. Becoming MySpace darlings and snagging a record deal came first, but the group felt it was especially important to cut their teeth on the road. They have been touring without respite for over a year.

“We had to prove ourselves. Not just to get other bands to respect us but to get kids to want to come back and see us.”

Like Cyrus’s mix of tattoos ’n’ TRESemmé, the ever-growing crowds of teens that have found their danceable beats so irresistible hail from divergent camps as well. “People are coming to our shows who like a lot of punk and heavier music, and a lot of times you wouldn’t think they’d be fans of our pop music,” he says. “And we even get parents coming to our shows with their kids, and they relate to it too because it reminds them of the ’80s.”

With Simple Plan, Faber Drive and
Cute is What We Aim For at Bell
Centre on Tuesday, Aug. 26, 7 p.m.,
$29.50-$42.50, all ages