Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Help, It's Metric

Artist: Metric
Album: Fantasies
Year: 2009
Grade: 2 pretzels

Ever since New Wave existed as a genre, it’s struggled with two opposing artistic forces pulling at it. On one hand, New Wave wants to stay true to its punk rock roots. It needs some of that edge to still seem urgent and full of life. At the same time, however, New Wave wants to be polished. New Wave dresses punk up for respectable audiences, packaging the bite and fury with a protective layer of poppy shine. Unfortunately, one slight imbalance in this formula can derail even the most talented New Wave band in a heartbeat. Even more unfortunately for Toronto’s Metric, they aren’t the most talented New Wave band and the imbalances on their new album, Fantasies, are more than slight.

Metric have never been a mind-shattering band, in my opinion. While their famous singles, “Combat Baby” and “Monster Hospital” are very fun and enjoyable in their own right, Metric’s albums have been wildly inconsistent and lackluster. Metric have always sounded very conflicted about their identity as a band. Half the time, they sound like an edgy guitar group, but the other half of the time, they sound like they want to take their local dance floor by storm. While there’s nothing wrong with wanting to combine those two, Metric never sound comfortable doing so.

Fantasies continues these trends, but this time, Metric bury these half-hearted songs under an impossibly polished production job. This album feels like every sharp corner has been carefully polished away, taking something that should be a punchy, punky New Wave album and making it completely toothless. The lead single “Help, I’m Alive” loses any sense of danger when the clichéd, stadium-ready keyboard fills show up. Even when the band stumble upon a genuinely great musical moment, like the Depeche Mode-worthy riff of “Sick Muse”, they end up drowning the song with the overly shiny production.

Ever since I first heard them, Metric have sounded like a band grasping at straws to me and Fantasies has done little to change my mind. Frontwoman Emily Haines does an admirable job trying to inject these songs with some fun and cockiness, but her thin voice can’t carry them alone. Again, Metric sound caught between the punk club and the dance floor. There are many bands who’ve made that combination work over the years, but with four albums now under their collective belt, Metric haven’t had much luck with it themselves. The band needs to decide what kind of music they want to make, instead of trying to hedge every bet by throwing together albums this mediocre.

(PS: This is my one-hundredth post! As always, I just want to thank everyone who's been reading Pretzel Logic!)

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