Album sleeve: Metric

Fantasies

Sometimes NME closes its eyes and wishes it were Canadian. Managing to totter along perfectly

on the thin line that separates being super-cool, really bloody nice and highly skilled at knocking out a weird-arse pop song that can grab you by the heart and the throat at the same time, they’re an intimidating bunch and no mistake. By this reckoning, Metric are unfaltering cultural stereotypes – and that’s exactly why they make us so gooey and weak at the knees. ‘Fantasies’ is the band’s newest album since 2005’s ‘Live It Out’ though, confusingly, an earlier album, ‘Grow Up And Blow Away’, wasn’t released until 2007. While the four-piece might not have spent the past few years up a Tibetan mountain hunting down the missing chord and searching for sonic enlightenment, they’ve certainly lost none of the delicious oddball energy that comfortably pitches their carefree electronic and romance-heavy tunes as the work of a lounge Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

‘Help I’m Alive’ is a killer way to open a record – a building, burning beast which morphs into a kitten-cute college-rock chugger before switching back to the throbbing death disco energy it kicked itself off with. Across the album’s 10 perfectly skewed songs, ‘Satellite Mind’ echoes Ladyhawke’s synth-driven ’80s aural road trips while ‘Front Row’ is

a celestial teen-pop take on My Bloody Valentine. ‘Stadium Love’, meanwhile,

is as spine-shakingly epic as its name suggests. Self-released on their own label, ‘Fantasies’’ finest moment is

the gorgeous, futuresonic ‘Gimme Sympathy’, which sees a breathy Emily Haines ask, “Who’d you rather be/The Beatles or The Rolling Stones?” Um, can we be Metric instead?

Leonie Cooper

More on this artist:
Metric NME Artist Page
Metric’s website

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