Ryan's Metric Review

There are some albums that we've been looking at over the past weeks that took a while to grow on me; I didn't particularly care for them on first listen, but the more I listened to them the more I dug them. That wasn't the case with Metric's Fantasies – I liked it right from the first listen, and subsequent listens have only served to deepen that love. I hadn't been expecting that, because I hadn't really cared for the Metric album previous to this one, Live It Out, or for lead singer Emily Haines' solo work that followed it; this album, though, really stand out as above and beyond the band's previous work.

Fantasies is one of those albums that attempts to be a lot of different things to different people, but unlike a lot of albums that attempt to do that, this one actually accomplishes what it sets out to do. It is simultaneously a fun, poppy record you can dance to, a lyrically complex indie rock record, and a reflection on the costs of becoming famous (in a vein similar to a record like Nirvana's In Utero album). Despite those different directions that the album's going in, it never feels like it loses its way at all, and manages to layer those different versions of itself into one nice little musical lasagna.

I know it might sound like I'm over-selling this, but Fantasies manages to do all this so well that it should be handed out on the first day of indie rock songwriting school. I've heard so many albums over the years that have tried to do what this album does, and does it in a way that makes it seem effortless.

Take, for example, a song like “Gimme Sympathy” (if you've been near a rock radio station anywhere in the country this year, there's a good chance you're already familiar with this one). This song is a textbook example of how to integrate a philosophical argument into a pop song, placing it within an easily understood metaphor (by asking “Who would you rather be, the Beatles or the Rolling Stones?”) and then giving equal credence to both sides (Haines sings “play me something like Here Comes the Sun”, but the song's title could be seen as a mashup of Gimme Shelter and Sympathy for the Devil) and ultimately letting the listener decide for themselves, rather than trying to get didactic in the bridge. The song serves as a good reminder that you can be deep while still being danceable, something that a lot of indie rock artists would do well to remember.

This isn't just one of the best albums to come out this year; it's one that is most likely going to catapult Metric fully into the mainstream, and will probably be talked about by music fans for years to come.