It’s difficult to review a much hyped album, especially one that has been as hotly anticipated as Metric’s Fantasies! Emily Haines has never sounded better. This pop album (yes, it’s pure indie pop, enjoy it for what it is!) features 10 synth-heavy tracks that veer toward the lighter side of the Metric scale. After listening to some of their earlier work, I have to say, Fantasies has a brighter, sunnier feel, although lyrically it still deals with loneliness (”Blindness”) and frustration (”Gold Guns Girls”). Perhaps I was especially smitten with exactly how Metric manages to turn such despairing lyrics into such snappy songs!
did I ask you for attention when affection was what I need?….there’s no glitter in the gutter, there’s no twilight galaxy
And yet when Emily sings “keep singing along” I’ll be damned if I don’t. Even at it’s slow, thoughtful, sad pace, “Twilight Galaxy” is a good pop song. The same can be said for most tracks on this album. “Gimme Sympathy” is a wonderful blend of synth and guitar work with great drum rolls to move it along. Lyrically, it’s not their best, but the tune is awesome and I can imagine the re-mixers are gonna have a field day with it! In a similar vein, “Front Row” takes the interplay between synthesizer and guitar and just explodes it. This is my favorite track on the album by far, I say to myself. And then I listen to the final track again. “Stadium Love” is simply a fantastic pop anthem. I can imagine some of the reasons they released “Help I’m Alive” as the first single from Fantasies, but honestly, “Stadium Love” is just a better sound, a better showcase for the band as a whole, to my ears.
Every song has it’s hook on this album. That’s the nature of pop music, afterall, it’s not exactly subtle, now is it? And some tracks’ hooks are more prominent than others, of course, but the chorus of “Sick Muse” is simply beautiful, full stop. Juxtaposed with Emily’s voice in the lower range and with lyrics of how “mommy is a sick muse” that angelic sounding chorus of “everybody, everybody just won’t fall in love, everybody everybody just won’t play with me” this song will break your heart. If you’re already a fan of Metric you’ll not be disappointed in this album, by any means. If you’re a fan of female vocalists in indie pop, synth-heavy dance tunes, you’ll love this album as well. For me, being a fan of industrial artists like Ayria, this was a very pleasant afternoon, well spent. I love pop music as much as the next lonely, heart-broken, bee-bopping girl 
Tracklist:
- Help I’m Alive
- Sick Muse
- Satellite Mind
- Twilight Galaxy
- Gold Guns Girls
- Gimme Sympathy
- Collect Call
- Front Row
- Blindness
- Stadium Love
What does Emily Haines say about the sources of this album?
For me, the major influences on the record were the places we wrote it: Bear Creek, this utopian farmhouse studio, and then our own studio in Toronto, which definitely brought in the electro, dance and rock elements because the city feels so good right now and so many of our musician friends were around. And then for me, being in Buenos Aires, most of the songs I brought to this record came out of being in exile with just a piano and a guitar. And then in the final stages, mixing at Electric Lady in NYC brought everything around to where we first met Josh and Joules.
All of these sources ring out loudly on Fantasies and at the heart of it all is Emily Haines, spinning fantasies and working out her demons… our demons.
special thanks to Myles Grosovsky of Sneak Attack Media
