CD Odyssey Disc 1269: Metric

It was my first day back at work today after 10 days off and I’m a bit knackered. I guess that’s why they call it work.

Disc 1269 is… Fantasies

Artist: Metric

Year of Release: 2009

What’s up with the Cover? A light bulb with very little power or an idea that isn’t terribly original.

How I Came to Know It: I originally heard about them through the video for their 2005 song “Poster of a Girl.” When I reviewed that record (2005’s “Live It Out” I repeatedly mis-name the song as “Portrait of a Girl”. I’m not going to correct it but will instead live with the shame.

How It Stacks Up:  Metric has seven albums, but I only have three of them. I had originally left the top spot open for “Fantasies” but now that all three are under my belt I’m going to give the title to 2005’s “Live It Out” and drop “Fantasies” back into second place. Since this is my last Metric review, here’s a full recap:

1. Live It Out: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 312)
2. Fantasies: 3 stars (reviewed right here)
3. Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?: 2 stars (reviewed at Disc 95)

Ratings: 3 stars

“Fantasies” saw Metric trade in their early indie pop sound for a more commercially friendly stadium anthem sound. It isn’t a sell-out, however; it is a natural progression of their sound, which always had the potential to go in that direction.

The resulting album is a bit uneven, but not because of the artistic choices. If anything, the same thing that holds previous Metric albums back applies here as well: they tend to imagine their songs to be a bit cleverer than they actually are. This can lead to unexpected artistic turns that don't necessarily make the song better.

What is good here is very good, with Emily Haines easily embracing her role as pop diva. Her vocals are equal parts alternative rocker girl and seductive starlet. The production is thick – even fuzzy in places – but it creates a big sound that makes everything feel Very Important. The songs have an urgent energy to them that fills your mind with images of laser light shows and flashing floodlights.

The sound worked for them commercially. This is the first record to chart and spawned three #1 hits on Canadian alternative radio (I’m told, I don’t listen to the radio). In any event, Metric had been making interesting music for a number of years and it was good to see them do well commercially.

For the most part, it is the radio hits that are my favourites on the record. The opener, “Help, I’m Alive” is a glorious anthem that mixes Haines’ sugar-sweet vocals with a surprisingly crunchy guitar. The song construction has a lot going on for a pop song but never feels weighed down as a result. As an A&R man would say “I think we’ve got a hit on our hands!” – and they did.

They never achieve the lofty heights of “Help, I’m Alive” on the album again, but they do manage to maintain the momentum it generates. The final track, “Stadium Love” ensures that the album’s book ends are also its best parts with another anthem, this time complete with plenty of enthusiastic “woo-hoo-woo-ooo” sounds in case you weren’t already sufficiently amped.

In between the record is solid, although “Twilight Galaxy” and “Collect Call” both feel a bit overly ambitious. They are dressed up in all the fanfare of the album’s production, but here it is an ill-fitting suit, too slick and polished for all the art-school experiments underneath.

My biggest beef with “Fantasies” isn’t about the record at all, but the concert experience I associate with it. I saw them live on this tour, and the show was one of those ones that is so underwhelming it sucks some of the future joy out of the studio album. It was at a big stadium show, and the audience were the most singularly out-of-time crowd I’ve ever seen, as they danced off the beat and sang along out of time. Many were clearly there for the experience, and not the band. Metric tried, but far away as they were, even they didn’t have the gravitas to ground the experience.

I wouldn’t go see Metric alive again, but “Fantasies” remains a solid record. I don’t put it on often, but it remains a keeper.

Best tracks: Help I’m Alive, Sick Muse, Stadium Love

CD Odyssey Disc 645: Emily Haines

I’m just back from the gym and feeling good about myself (a workout will do that) and feeling positive about life in general. I warn you, however, that this positivity will not find its way into the following album review.

Disc 645 is….Knives Don’t Have Your Back

Artist: Emily Haines & the Soft Skeleton

Year of Release: 2006

What’s up with the Cover? Not much. Black print on a copper background. I kind of like the simplicity of it.

How I Came To Know It: I was trying to find something musically interesting to buy Sheila for either a Christmas or birthday present. This album had just come out, and I knew that Sheila really liked Metric, so I took a chance it would be good.

How It Stacks Up:  I only have this one solo album by Emily Haines, but I prefer her work in Metric.

Rating:  2 stars

For those who don’t know, Emily Haines is the lead singer and best known person in the Canadian band Metric. I don’t know who the Soft Skeleton is but according to the liner notes they are a few of Haines’ favourite musicians. They needed a firmer backbone to stand up to some of the poor decisions made on this record.

As a general rule if I like a group, I’ll give individual band members a chance on their solo work. While there is no exact formula, I find that vocalists out on their own tend to focus on sparse arrangements and lyrics. Since I like both, it is usually a good bet, and maybe because of that expectation I found “Knives Don’t Have Your Back” underwhelming.

Haines has a pretty voice, which can feel conspiratorial and waifish in just the right way – like she’s whispering her secrets to you in a dark room. It is used to good effect in her band Metric, but on “Knives…” it feels like she is missing the counterbalance the band provides to weight to her songs.

In Haines’ defence, it is clear from the outset that a quiet, muted record is what she was going for. There is nothing wrong with that, but the songs on “Knives…” don’t hold up under this treatment. They are meant to be atmospheric, but for the most part I found they felt more like they weren’t going anywhere. It is like Enya’s early work, but missing the gentle roll of the Celtic rhythm and the vocal power.

The worst part is the piano, which dominates the album (many songs are almost exclusively piano). It is played in a thudding style. I read on Wikipedia (which is never wrong) that Haines was trying to recreate the experience she had as a girl of quietly playing on her family piano. Unfortunately she’s done too good a job of it. The piano just needs to do more to hold your attention. She pushes the sound at the expense of the songs, and where these tracks could be haunting they instead tend to come off as plodding and lacking direction.

I’ve never been a big fan of Metric’s lyrics, but on her own Haines does a slightly better job and some of these songs have strong messages that are delivered subtly. While they don’t build tight storylines, that isn’t how these songs work, and the snippets of images stitch together to make interesting mood pieces. Lines like “There are so many skirts under the table/None of these long legs are mine” (from “Detective Daughter”) are both sexy and openly awkward, not unlike Haines herself. In other places Haines goes to great pains to remind us she is not a sex symbol (even though in the indie world she is – beauty can be a burden as much as homeliness).

One side note on the packaging: there is an excessive and pretentious review on the back cover by someone named Robert Wyatt (who is apparently a famous English musician according to The Google – who knew). The write up tries way too hard, and feels like one of those hokey sell jobs you used to get on the cover of sixties records, minus the charm. It is always better to let your music speak for itself.

And on that note, I will say that as I wrote this review I gave this album another good listen, and it sounded a lot better. It has its moments, but it just doesn’t consistently grab me. And so with Sheila's blessing, I’m going to let it go to a home that will appreciate it more than I do.

Best tracks:   Crowd Surf Off a Cliff, Detective Daughter

CD Odyssey Disc 312: Metric

My last review was the Wild Strawberries, a nineties indie pop band from Canada that never hit it big. Fast forward ten years, and you get this next band - a Canadian pop band that did hit it big.

I would have preferred it had been reversed, but fame is fickle, my friends.

Disc 312 is...Live It Out

Artist: Metric

Year of Release: 2005

What’s Up With The Cover?: It looks like lead singer Emily Haines is drowning in some kind of oil monster that escaped from a piece of Patrick Nagel's eighties wall art.

How I Came To Know It: As I mentioned when I reviewed "Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?" way back at Disc 95, I saw a video for the song "Portrait Of A Girl" and bought the album. As it happens, that album was "Live It Out", making this record my introduction to the band.

How It Stacks Up: We have three Metric albums. Of the three, I'd put "Live It Out" in the middle of the pack, or 2nd.

Rating: 3 stars.

I already detailed the basics on Metric when I reviewed their previous album, but to recap, they are an indie pop band from Canada that features the waifish voice (and good looks) of Emily Haines.

Much like their previous album, "Live It Out" is an uneven mess of music - some bordering on excellent, and others being simply annoying. It is demonstrably better than their previous release, but still can't quite arrive in spite of itself.

On the plus side, there are strong songs like "Portrait Of A Girl", "Empty" and "Too Little Too Late" all of which show Metric's ability to write a strong pop melody that sounds fresh and unlike so much of the junk that populates the radio. The opening guitar riff in "Too Little, Too Late" is particularly fresh; a cross between Johnny Cash's loose almost out of tune playing and the clean, rythymic plucking sound of someone like R.E.M.'s Peter Buck.

The song I bought the record for, "Portrait Of A Girl" is also strong, and shows off Haines' thin, girlish voice at its best. I could live without the eighties backbeat in this song, and the added production of spoken word whisperings that come in just below volume, but I can forgive both for giving the song a unique feel.

I can't forgive songs like "Hand$hake$", a song with a title spelled in a way that would make Ke$sha proud. Obviously anything that makes Ke$ha proud is not a good thing, but it goes beyond that. "Handshakes" (I can't spell it wrong more than once without my hands rotting off) is precisely what annoys me about Metric. It is a song with a promising lick, and a theme that may be overdone (rampant consumerism), but is still topical, particularly given the rising levels of personal debt in today's society.

But somewhere between the opening lick, and the end of the song, Metric finds the need to populate the song with a hundred different little sounds, and eventually a desperate sounding Emily sing-shouting the line: "Buy this car to drive to work/Drive to work to pay for this car," over and over again. Yes, we get your point, Metric, but after about the 4th repetition I ceased wanting to. Strangely, this same technique works much better on a later track "Monster Hospital," but I think it is just that "Monster Hospital" is a superior song, and able to withstand the incessant futzing about with the arrangement.

Overall, there are a lot of good- but not great songs like this on "Live It Out". This album frustrated me because it has the potential to be excellent, but the excessively cute production and the over-reaching effort to be politically and socially topical detracts from the effort.

The real irony is I went to see Metric in concert when they were last in town, and from what I saw their fans could care less if they were topical. During their hits I saw a lot of vigorous, off-beat dancing (by which I mean the dancers were off the beat, not groovy). During their other songs, I saw a lot of absent-minded swaying from people who acted like they didn't know what they were hearing. Maybe if these deeper cuts were more listenable, Metric could get their message to a larger audience - starting with their own fans.

Of course, they would fix these problems on their next record - but that is the subject of a future review...

Best tracks: Empty, Glass Ceiling, Too Little Too Late, Monster Hospital, Live It Out

CD Odyssey Disc 95: Metric

A strange thing happened to me today. I woke up with severe laryngitis. Then, I was sent a very heartfelt article about how movie critic Roger Ebert can no longer speak, and read the article at the one brief time when I also, cannot speak.

It was a moving experience, and one thing that I noticed was Ebert felt most free when he was still able to write and express himself. Whatever happens to me through the years, I hope I never lose the ability to read and write until the end. As for today, voiceless and eager - what did I write about?

Disc 95 is...Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?

Artist: Metric

Year of Release: 2003

How I Came To Know It: I heard Metric do a song called "Portrait of a Girl" and bought that album a few years back. I wasn't a big fan, but Sheila really liked it, so I bought her this album (for brevity, let's call it "OWUWAYN?") for her birthday. For the record - she likes it.

How It Stacks Up: We have three Metric albums, which I think is all of their commercial releases. Of the three, I'd put "OWUWAYN?" as my least favourite.

Rating: 2 stars.

Funny how I was just saying how I can't seem to rate anything very low on the Odyssey. Well, here's one.

I think Metric is OK in small doses, but for the most part I like the small doses off their other two albums. Even those, I don't put on too often.

This particular album is a mix of pop, something resembling indie, but not quite indie, and the distinct overall sound of what you might expect at a generic dance club you visited when you were 20.

Certainly, the video for "Portrait of a Girl", which shows off the very elfin lead singer, Emily Haines, didn't hurt my decision to purchase this album.

This album is like that night club; you might have gone there for the girls, but you find yourself waiting for a good song to dance to more often than enjoying yourself.

Those good songs are there. I particularly like "Dead Disco" which bemoans the regurgitative nature of popular music these days. Generally true, and Metric does make a serious effort to sound different than the pack - mostly succeeding. Also in addition to being a fox, Emily Haines has a very distinctive and interesting voice (kind of like when you met that girl at the club who wasn't really that into you - but man was she fun to dance with!)

Anyway, sounding different from the pack is not enough, and more than once on this album, Metric's sound is ruined by arrangements that go from interesting, to overly busy to manic and unfocused and back again - often within the same song.

Also, many lyrics have that arty obscurity that passes for deep thought, but I find are deliberately obtuse as often as they are interesting. Case in point from the song "Succexy", which I presume is an anti-war song:

"All we do is talk static, split screens
As the homeland plots enemies.
Invasion - so succexy, so succexy, so succexy."

Yeah - I get the point, but these lines just need to be better. Also, note to Metric - "succexy" is not a word. "But Shakespeare made up words!" Emily might exclaim in indignation. That's true, but there is a big difference here - Shakespeare's words didn't suck.

It is not all bad though. I quite like certain sections of "Calculation Theme", such as:

"Tonight your ghost will ask my ghost
'Where is the love?'
Tonight your ghost will ask my ghost
'Who here is in line for a raise?'
Tonight your ghost will ask my ghost
'Where is the love?'
Tonight your ghost will ask my ghost
'Who put these bodies between us?'"

So, when Metric sticks to their melodies, and is clever, but not overly clever, this album is actually OK, but these moments are too infrequent to make this record anything but average. I'm hopeful their later entries in the Odyssey will be better.

Best tracks: Calculation Theme, On A Slow Night, Dead Disco.