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Metric - Fantasies

Rating

RIYL

Emily Haines
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Stars

Release Date

04/14/2009

Label

Arts & Crafts

Tracklist

1. Help I'm Alive
2. Sick Muse
3. Satellite Mind
4. Twilight Galaxy
5. Gold Guns Girls
6 .Gimme Sympathy
7. Collect Call
8. Front Row
9. Blindness
10. Stadium Love

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Recent Ratings
rustycage	Rick Gebhardt
lpshinobi	Chris Conlan

Metric’s rise to fame happened quickly, at least here in Canada, with the singles “Dead Disco” and “Combat Baby” from 2003’s Old World Underground, Where are You Now?. Since then, the band has released 2005’s Live It Out and 2007’s – but technically the band’s first album that never got released – Grow Up and Blow Away. So if we don't count that album, Fantasies is the first effort from Emily Haines and company in four years.

This album starts off with the single “Help I’m Alive” which is a perfect mascot for this effort. It shows the band experimenting with more electronic layers than usual and also features some interesting instrumental variations. Ms. Haine’s singing has improved as well – she, like the instruments, has a lot more variation in her delivery and explores a larger range. Like the single, all ten tracks show a little bit of an experimental side to the band’s sound this time around.

“Twilight Galaxy” is the first mellow track on the album, but it is followed up with “Gold Guns Girls”, a track that sounds like fellow Canadians Tegan and Sara, which makes it one of the best numbers on the disc. The band throws a little bit of a Euro tinge on “Gimme Sympathy,” and the Lights-esque “Collect Call” is a cute poppy track. The album finishes out with the fantastic “Blindness” and the heavy – and great – “Stadium Love”.

Even though half of this album could be thrown onto a Greatest Hits disc for the band, that other half slows it down just enough for the album to be kicked out of the A- or A grade area. While most bands fall flat when they experiment, the experimentation found on Fantasies is almost entirely positive.

Sure, Fantasies doesn’t rekindle the same brilliance that the band has had in the past, but it does foreshadow a great future. Regardless of past-future talk, Fantasies is an album that Metric fans will have lots of fun with, and it should be a blast to see performed live.

--Logan Broger