Metric
Fantasies
Metric Music International/Last Gang Records
By David Chiu
With its New Wave-ish melodic hooks, heavy beats, and Emily Haines’ reedy voice, Canadian band Metric’s latest album is both noisy and stylish. Some of the music on Fantasies seems to draw inspiration from a variety of alternative rock and pop influences from the late ‘70s to mid ‘90s. For example the opening guitar notes of “Gold Guns Girls” sounds reminiscent of the Sex Pistols until it morphs into a technopop tune similar to Berlin’s “The Metro”; “Sick Muse” hearkens back to ‘Brit pop; and “Gimme Sympathy” sounds like a Blondie track (although it makes the references to the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, especially the latter band’s “Here Comes the Sun”). But don’t call Fantasies a derivative work as it certainly stands out on its own terms—there seems to be angst and desperation in the pointed words set against the music’s dense atmospherics. The mix of electropop and brash rock (one of the songs is aptly called “Stadium Love”) adds up to a very bold-sounding work.
NewBeats 