Metro-sexual

Photo: Rae Votta

Despite being very young, despite having been discovered by a record label intern who found them on MySpace, despite having been playing tiny shows in coffeehouses a little over a year ago, Metro Station knows how to seriously electro-rock the house like a brasher, less self-conscious, more exuberant version of The Bravery, Cut Copy or We Are Scientists.

I didn't go deliberately to see them play -- at least not the first time, when they just happened to be opening for Cobra Starship and totally caught my attention. After a couple more west coast dates this weekend I felt obligated to share the fruits of my obsessive stalking with all of you!

Fun facts about Metro Station:

> Guitar player and sometimes singer Trace Cyrus -- adopted son to Billy Ray, brother to Disney star Miley -- totally seems like the punk rock black sheep of that family. Not so much that the Cyrus clan didn't show up en masse to the band's LA show, though. If Billy Ray were my stepdad, I'd have figured out how to invest in as many piercings and tattoos as my underage self could talk my way into, too. Maybe tour leader and all around troublemaker Gabe Saporta from Cobra Starship agrees -- at the same show he wore a super-cheezy Billy Ray tour t-shirt during his set, the kind you'd buy for five bucks off a dude in an arena parking lot.

> This whole band thing began as a play-date:

Cyrus and 18-year-old [singer Mason] Musso were set up on a jam-date by their mothers in early 2006. (Musso's brother, Mitchel, plays Oliver Oken on "Hannah Montana"). Cyrus worked in a Burbank mall on his way to dropping out of La Canada High School, while Musso attended acting auditions and music business classes at College of the Canyons.

> They have a majority of gay hair. Three out of four members of Metro Station are rocking extremely spiky, slightly more exuberant than standard issue emo boy 'dos. (If there's one completely superficial factor likely to make me sit through an opening act I've never heard of, gay hair is it. This can't be surprising by now.)

> Mason and Trace trade off singing their extremely ambiguous lyrics. And if "Shake It" is not a song about a threesome, I have no business doing this job.

> They're so barely legal that their 26-year-old synth player, Blake Healy, and 31-year-old drummer Anthony Improgo (the third gay hair guy) had to check their cradle-robbing image with friends. "It felt like I was creepy hanging out with 17-year-olds," Healy told the Los Angeles Times. "I had to ask my roommate, 'Hey, are these song as good as I think they are?'"

> Trace has excellent timing. While he cannot seem to sing and play guitar at the same time (which no one in the crowd really seems to mind, given how he shimmies around), he easily handles alternating projectile vomiting and breathy lyrical delivery. Which is a good thing given that he was sick and puking every 30 seconds or so through several of the songs in LA, stopping only to ask if we'd noticed and appreciated his awesome rock-must-go-on abilities.

> They seem to unironically love Jeffree Star -- especially when Billy Ray Cyrus is looking down from VIP as Jeffree came on stage to help add the obviously missing four-letter lyrics in "Control." [Warning: Extremely lousy, low-quality video and audio, but it was the best I could find.] Mama Cyrus looked a little shocked, and Miley fans are losing their shit at snapshots of her with Jeffree from after. Save the children!

> Their new video for "Control" is like Fiona Apple's "Criminal" but with less heroin-soaked, sleepy sex and more hyper kids playing spin the bottle and having food-fight orgies. See for yourself:

You can watch the American Apparel ad video for "Kelsey" and other antics at their YouTube, hear more songs at their MySpace, and throw your virtual jock strap in the air with other fans at Buzznet. And a few more live shots after the jump.

All photos by Rae Votta. Click to enlarge!

Mason Musso

Trace Cyrus

Comments

[jessica b]

I love this band, and it was a great show.

Also, I generally strongly dislike Jeffree Star, but the bitch looked FIERCE that night.

[Tim Lee]

Gay hair? What is this, high school - 1983?

[Tim Lee]

Gay hair? What is this, high school - 1983?

[Zoe]

I have to confess here, I've been following the Trace/Jeffree/Hanna drama on ONTD, and I love this band so much that I dearly hope the part about drugs isn't true. I mean when I met Trace he was as stoned as a bat, but I hope it's nothing harder than that. He's young and brilliant and too full of potential to burn out in young Hollywood fashion.

[Alanasaurus]

This was funny, but gay hair? I'm pretty sure hair doesn't have a sexual orientation.

[jeri]

i love mason musso, and who cares if u dont like their hair, apparently a lot of people do s stfu about it.

This is hella retarded!!! i love this band and i love their hair!!
so fuck you whoever wrote this!!

[dena-marie]

mason musso is fucking hot!!. trace said he doesnt do drugs on an interview that you can find on youtube!. metro station are the most awesome band! and anyone that disses them can go get fucked by a gay trans sexual with aids and a bent dick!!.

[BRITTANY]

WHO CALLED MY MAN'S HAIR GAY???
UMMMMM.... YOU NEED GLASSES BADLY
SO GO BUY SOME !!! ASAP

[Alyssa]

I LOVE TRACE!

[Emalee]

i love aNt cam on you tube but i was wondering if he was gay but hes HOTTTT!!!!!!!!!
I love how their all work together that so awesome
fuck who said that hes an ass.
HES FUCKING AWESOME !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!