Metric

Wed 15th Apr, 2009 in Features

Sombre minor chords resound. A woman stands on the platform of an unknown station as a train draws in and then quickly away again, whisking her off with it. The message is clear. Metric – as represented here in the mini-documentary that accompanies the release of their fourth studio album Fantasies – is a band in transition.

The figure is of course Metric’s frontwoman Emily Haines, tortured artiste par excellence and purveyor of one of 2006’s very best solo offerings, the gloriously bleak Knives Don’t Have Your Back. The location is Argentina, venue for Haines’ widely publicised retreat from the limelight back in 2007, 2008.

“When I came to Buenos Aires,” she explains, “I’d absolutely given up on writing, which I didn’t tell anybody that I work with. I just felt like there was some sort of gridlock that happened, that nothing was ever going to be cool enough, nothing was ever going to be referential enough. It was either going to sound like somebody else, or not sound enough like somebody else…I took things as complex as I could and my life sucked. I was very unhappy with that place. So I felt really like the music I was going to write for this next record, which would dictate the next whole chapter of my life, needed to be based in simplicity and just be really genuine.”

The sentiment is echoed by the band’s co-founder and lead guitarist Jimmy Shaw, who I speak to at his second home in Montmartre, Paris. For Shaw, the new album signals a departure from the Metric of Old World Underground and Live it Out; the albums that brought the band international acclaim and the intense few years of touring that left its members emotionally exhausted.

Fantasies, he says, is the product of a revitalised, more positive group. “The band was just in a different place when we wrote this record. We had had time to pull our personal lives together. Hell, just get personal lives! Get apartments; buy a second pair of shoes. We didn’t feel like we were fighting to stay afloat as much. We had a bit more time and freedom to figure out what we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it.”

By freedom, Shaw is referring to the fact that Fantasies was entirely self-funded, both recorded and produced without the ‘help’ of a label at his new studio in Toronto. While that undoubtedly entailed an element of risk financially speaking, it was perceived as a necessary one from a creative perspective. Plus, it enabled the band to nurture a relationship directly with their fans, without the need for industry middle-men. “It’s just way more fun this way,” says Shaw. “I’ve seen our fans at shows and they’re awesome. They look cool, they’re outspoken and they’re people I wanna hang out with. On the other hand I’ve met a large part of the music industry and I can’t say the same.”

Politically, too, things were different this time around. “The world feels like more of an optimistic place now than it did five years ago to us. There was a sense upon W’s re-election that no good could ever come again, that all hope was lost. That feeling is different now.”

Not that Fantasies is exactly an optimistic record. The album’s opening lyrics, for instance – “I tremble, they’re gonna eat me alive” – are absolutely classic Haines; which is to say, hardly uplifting. But the overall tone is different from the band’s previous work. In place of the sardonic feminist politics of Live it Out’s Poster of a Girl and the altogether more abrasive Patriarch on a Vespa, for example, are the atmospheric minimalism of Twilight Galaxy and the glam-rock of album closer Stadium Love. The latter, inspired by an internet meme, imagines different species of animal squaring off against each other in gladiatorial combat.

Whether or not this new sensibility makes for better art, however, is another matter. The strength of the singles is not in question. Fantasies hosts a number of incredibly catchy, hook-laden New Wave tracks. Help! I’m Alive, which became a surprise hit around the world early this year after being picked up by radio stations following its leak from a pressing plant in Europe, is instantly likeable. And the synth-driven Gimme Sympathy, with its ludicrously infectious chorus – “Who would you rather be, the Beatles or the Rolling Stones?” – is a guaranteed hit if ever there was one.

But it was the progressive politics and wry lyrics of Metric’s previous efforts more than hooks and melodies that made them such a compelling listen. And it was precisely the uncompromising bleakness of Haines’ solo work that had me so excited about Metric’s next release. I was hoping that the band would take Haines’ lead and produce something with an even greater emotional impact, not tone it down instead. No doubt with Fantasies the new Metric is exhibiting a much improved mental health, but – at risk of repeating an old rock cliché – I can’t help but wonder whether that has been at the expense of their music.

When will Metric next be in Australia, then? Shaw promises it’ll be before the year is out. “Either summer, fall or winter,” he says. Nice of him to narrow it down!

Metric’s Fantasies is out now on Metric Music International through Inertia.