More than half of the members of Broken Social Scene and Metric are not where they are supposed to be. They are, instead, on their way to or from their hotel. Jason Collett of Broken Social Scene and Joshua Winstead of Metric are alone in the Gargoyle’s Green Room, milling around tables of lunch meat and condiments that look suspiciously like Holmes Lounge leftovers.

In a few minutes Collett will open the show with an acoustic set of songs from his solo album “Motor Motel Love Songs.” So I corner Newstead, the bass player for Metric, for an interview, or, to give credit where credit is due, Newstead corners me. “James and Emily started Metric about three years ago,” says Newstead, attempting to explain the chicken-or-egg relationship between Metric and Broken Social Scene, which is made all the more confusing by the two bands touring together. “After 9/11 happened,” clarifies Newstead, “three-fourths of Metric went up to Toronto to hang out, and during that time Broken Social Scene was making their album.” To make a short story that seems long even shorter: the members of both bands are all friends, so there’s a lot of musical overlap.

One look at Broken Social Scene’s liner notes proves that their recording studio must have doubled for a tree house where the gang got together after school. At least 15 people play on the album, including Metric’s singer Emily Haines and guitarist James Shaw. The band is from Toronto and Metric is from Toronto-sort of.

“I’m not from Toronto,” comments Newstead. He’s kind of jumpy and keeps using his leg as a drum kit. He speaks quickly in short bursts, as if he’s overdue for his next dose of Ritalin. “Myself and Joules Scott-Key the drummer,” he goes on, “we’ve been hanging out for about twelve years. I grew up in Texas and then New York. Joules and I moved to New York to play in several different bands, and during the last few years we met James and Emily.”

“We’re not really based anywhere right now. We’re based in Los Angeles, New York and Toronto because we’ve been moving between those three cities for the last three years.”

Perhaps they should be called the Sublets instead. But one of the perks of having three home-bases is having three hometown fan-bases. And as their hometown fans surely know, Metric’s album, released last week, proved to be almost as full of ass-kicking energy as their live show.

The album is titled “Old World Underground, Where The Hell Are You Now?” It’s a long, if amusing title, that, for entertainment purposes only, can be made into the long, if amusing, acronym OWUWTHAYN. Instead of pointing this out to Newstead, I ask how he would describe Metric’s hyper funk rock.

“The future of everything,” says Winstead with mock stoicism. He pauses for effect while I laugh. “No,” he continues, more seriously, “you peg it. Go get the album and listen to it.” Jason Collett, who has been tuning his guitar this whole time, chimes in with his description of the Metric sound: “Shit hot bad.”

He means that in a good way.

But what I really want to know before hearing Metric, and what I’m dying to know after the show, is in what direction the band wants Metric to head over the next few years.

“That’s ridiculous,” is Newstead’s only comment on the question of the future of his band, and at this point, he’s probably right.

During Metric’s set, I stalk several members of Broken Social Scene until one of them, guitarist and distortionist extraordinaire Brendan Canning, gets stuck with me. We’re sitting on the benches in the downstairs of Mallinckrodt, and the sharp pop of Metric blazes out of the Gargoyle every time someone opens the door. Canning is soft-spoken with a literal mop of blonde hair and a voice straight out of “Strange Brew”; in other words, he’s stereotypically Canadian.

To Canning, the overwhelmingly positive reception of Broken Social Scene’s album “You Forgot It In People” means “we can file into St. Louis with a pretty good attitude, go to a lot of places where we’ve never been and play to lots of people. If we weren’t being well-received, well, we probably wouldn’t even be here.”

“I was telling everybody about Beatle Bob because I’ve played St. Louis before,” Canning continues. Ah, Beatle Bob. A few songs into Metric’s set, Haines pointed out that the infamous Beatle Bob was “dancing his ass off” in the front row (as usual). So she invited him up onstage.

The phenomenon of Beatle Bob (a post-middle-age man with an early 60s Beatles shag who attends every concert in this town) will always be new hat to some; I for one am over it, and sick of (jealous of?) bands dragging him up to do his cha-cha on stage. What I hadn’t considered, however, is why bands get such a kick out of Bob.

“It’s fun to break up the monotony of show after show,” says Canning. “Driving, arriving, setting up, playing, checking in, checking out, driving, arriving . . .”

Point taken. Still, with diversity of style and make-up like that of Broken Social Scene’s you’d think the sheer number of possible people in the band would break the monotony. But as Canning explains, the amount of various input on any given song depends on the song.

“Every song has a slightly different story to it. The album is sort of a collection of songs from different factions of Broken Social Scene. The lineup has members coming in and out. That’s the sort of band we are. We have friends who play in a lot different bands, so if they’re in town and we have a show booked we’ll play together.”

“We played just Toronto and Montreal until March of this year,” continues Canning. “We’re learning to sort of be a five piece at some times and then realizing, well, it’s getting sort of confusing sometimes. We played Montreal last Friday for a festival and it was a bit chaotic. There were fourteen of us and it was kind of a party. Hard to get everyone focused. But you can’t stray too much because you’re not just there to have fun, you’re there to perform. It makes for a memorable show when you have all your friends involved.”

At this point, some of those friends and fellow Broken Social Sceners Kevin Drew and Jason Collett step outside for a smoke break. Canning and I join them. I keep thinking of Canning’s claim that there was pressure from within the band to make “You Forgot It In People” a five star record. Of course you can’t guarantee that, which makes it all the more shocking that it turned out that way.

I ask the guys to describe their music, since it varies so much in sound and warrants so many overused comparisons (My Bloody Valentine, Radiohead, etc.).

“It’s like Bruce Coburn says,” says Collett, referring to a Canadian writer that the band chides me for not knowing. “We kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight. You got that, Jess?”

I got it, and after a stellar show at the Gargoyle, a couple hundred St. Louisians got it too.

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