APRIL: A Short, Swine-Flu Free Summary words: Jamie Milton
Thank heavens we were preoccupied with ordering batches of masks and tinned food this month. Had it not been for the global pandemic which WE DEFINITELY SHOULD NOT START GETTING COMPLACENT ABOUT, we’d have been bored shitless. Music was pretty rubbish and it’s got me thinking that 2009 is going to be an even worse music-year than 2008. At least last year by this time we had the pleasure of Cut Copy, Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver and No Age, all single-handedly saving the year from a dreadful collapse. This year, the big guns have delivered and The Horrors have got brilliant. But there’s not much else to say apart from Mica Levi can’t cut it live with an acoustic guitar, but she sure can on record.
April was devoid of triumph and stand-out moments. Instead we were treated to a solid batch of follow-up records and a couple of stinkers. Super Furry Animals officially put out their excellent ninth record, Welsh accents included, with ‘Dark Days/Light Years’. And fellow veterans Doves made the four-year-wait worth it by revisiting their epic, uplifting rock sound. Bat For Lashes went a thousand steps forward with her second record ‘Two Suns’, with Yeasayer adding a crafty edge to the songs. Song-wise, nothing will top ‘Daniel’ this year. It’s quite simply, flawless.
The Veils’ third record was unsurprisingly sophisticated and expert in songwriting, with unsurprisingly impressive results. Camera Obscura might just have made their best record yet with the dreamy ‘My Maudlin Career’ and Bill Callahan (pictured) surprised us a little with his twisted lullabies in ‘Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle’. The only disappointment came in the form of Metric, which to MFM’s annoyance, everybody else seems to think is pretty good. But for fuck’s sake, it’s really not. The Enemy didn’t disappoint, instead they wowed us with their laugh-out-loud lyrical content (“You know there’s no such thing as a free meal // There ain’t no future in British steel“). Well Tom Clarke, there ain’t no future in Mexican tourism for the time being but you don’t hear THEM complaining. They probably are though, they’re just a bit far away.
ALBUM REVIEW: Metric – Fantasies
words: Jamie Milton
“If somebody’s got soul / You’ve gotta make the move”
Metric have soul. They have an effortlessly achieved demeanour of cool that has always been something to be reckoned with. In ‘Live It Out’, tracks were refreshing, all due to a rare gothic groove that scared the living shit out of you. Think about the first time ‘Patriarch On A Vespa’ blew you away with its overhwelming powerful opening chord. They had intention, direction, a consistent aim and achievement. I think you can probably tell where I’m going with this…
Whether some big-wig record heads have their ears parked on the studio walls or whether it was a genuine belief that commercial success was the right way to go, ‘Fantasies’ is an altogether manifested attempt to build on reasonable popularity and mould it into something huge. It’s not, strictly speaking, ’selling out’. No. It’s a bandwagon jump on musical trends but it’s not neccesarily a die-hard attempt to lure in the dollar. But in this plunge for the riches, something’s fallen out of their pockets. The dirtiness of Emily Haine’s lyrics – gone. The tightness and formidability of the rhythm section, the overall sound – only visible on one single track, ‘Gold Guns Girls’. That very song, assisted in some small part by occasional glimmering moments of hope, save the album from falling from the money pit straight down through the trap door to oblivion.
‘Stadium Love’’s title on its own is definitely a statement, reassuring all of where exactly Metric aren’t aiming for. But they leave without any indication of where exactly they are heading. Metric has always been Haines’ outputs for the jaunty pop, the side-step from her mirkier creations as a solo artist. Here, there’s no sense of joy or relief on her part – as a project, Metric doesn’t sound refreshing to any of the members anymore.
It feels like more than just a stumble, more on the level of a fifty-foot-dive from a luxury apartment onto rusty concrete. Truthfully, never has an album so much deserved to be laid out on an interrogation table, repeatedly asked “what the fuck just happened?” The first three tracks, commencing with the awkward but catchy ‘Help, I’m Alive’, declare something at least, and warrant mild applause. ‘Gold Guns Girls’, believe it or not, is near-on perfect. But there onwards comes a dip so severe, the musical equivalent of Paradise to Hades, that you feel physically offended. ‘Stadium Love’ is the perfect example of how not to apply synthesizers and stop-start rhythms, the culmination of a dreadful period of indecision and what must be sheer laziness.
It’s still pretty amazing that ‘Live It Out’ continues to get play-time on my stereo at least once a month. Not only was it released in 2006 but it was also a fairly low-key release, on DrownedInSound Records. Now though, it looks like Metric will be hogging up some more stereo-time, regardless of who else wants to play, with their third full-length album, ‘Fantasies’.
‘Help, I’m Alive’ has already been given superb praise by us a few months back and below you can get a newly-unveiled acoustic version of the track.
First thing’s first, though. Check out the ‘Fantasies’ tracklisting:
-Help I’m Alive
-Sick Muse
-Satellite Mind
-Twilight Galaxy
-Gold Guns Girls
-Gimme Sympathy
-Collect Call
-Front Row
-Blindness
-Stadium Love
Now for this piano-led acoustic version that you might have heard in the background of a video documentary a few months back. It’s pretty impressive how the track remains just as compelling, even without the edgy attitude that made it stand out so much in the first place.
“my heart keeps beating like a hammer” NEW TO US/ 2009 FORECAST: Metric – Help, I’m Alive words: Jamie Milton
When you learn that Emily Haines writes every Metric song in the same way that she did for her solo, Soft Skeleton album, you can only think up the wonderful process of how a basic, four-chord piano tune could progress into something like this. Haines may have gone away to work on her own project last year but Metric’s still very much at the forefront of her mind, she continues to write with the frame of mind that “The whole point of Metric was to create music that appeals to the masses and that gets on the radio…” (musicOMH).
So she went over to Buenos Aires to empty that busy head of hers and since returning she’s penned down the final versions of the tracks that’ll make up the next Metric album, surely due for next year. ‘Help, I’m Alive’ takes us back with ease to 2006’s ‘Live It Out’, a chunky bassline grinds its way through the dirty, jumpy structure of the song, Haines clearly attempted to make this more ‘Handshakes’ than ‘Empty’, more coherent than punchy, as her voice occasionally lets rip after echoes overwhelm all else from her contribution at the start.
Nothing groundbreaking occurs in this slap of modern-day art-rock, the Canadian troupe stick to previously scrawled formulas, mastered at the time. Hopefully Haines’ vunerability that was so perfectly exposed in her solo outing weaves its way into the works at some point on her next record but for now, expectations remain at a high.
All mp3s posted on Music Fan's Mic are posted after gaining the relevant permission.
Jamie Milton began Music Fan's Mic in 2006 as a means of publishing and collecting his reviews for other publications. Since then both Milton and Gareth O'Malley are co-running the blog and posting the best new music on a regular basis.
Boom-box-in':
Yeasayer - Odd Blood LP
Final Fantasy Heartland LP
Beach House - Teen Dream LP
These New Puritans - We Want War
Gigi - The Old Graveyard
jj - The xx Intro
Toro Y Moi - Causers of This LP
Liars - Sisterworld LP
Vampire Weekend - White Sky
Los Campesinos! - In Medias Res
uns Girls’. That very song, assisted in some small part by occasional glimmering moments of hope, save the album from falling from the money pit straight down through the trap door to oblivion.
MFM @ HYPEM
