Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is one of my all-time favorite movies, and “Black Sheep” by Metric is its anthem. Envy Adams, played by Brie Larson, performs this song with her band Clash at Demonhead before Scott Pilgrim, played by Michael Cera, must battle Envy’s boyfriend to the death. I fell in love with “Black Sheep” but didn’t feel the need to explore Metric any further.
Luckily a recommendation to listen to Fantasies landed in my lap in 2023 when I was doing a theatre internship in Steamboat. I finally delved a little deeper. And I loved what I heard.
Metric is new wave, through and through. They take the bright, bold parts of synth-pop and meld it beautifully with the dark, arty parts of post-punk. The sounds of Fantasies are industrial and natural, electronic and acoustic, all at the same time. I loved the blend of rock and punk and alternative with synthesizers. Metric flirts with dark wave constantly.
Their latest album, Romanticize the Dive, stays in theme. I hear many other artists within these songs: Daft Punk (Random Access Memories era), Charli xcx (BRAT era, specifically the song “I might say something stupid”), Lorde (Pure Heroine era), and Molchat Doma (Этажи era). It’s like Metric is throwing a party at a dystopian nightclub in a brutalist concrete building. The guests of honor? A drum machine march, a chorus guitar pedal and a hollow synth, gifts from these legendary artists.
“Victim Of Luck,” which we've been spinning in heavy rotation here at Studio One the past several weeks, starts the album off strongly. It sits you down in a spaceship, its beeps and rocket whistles floating wistfully among the steady beat of the drums. It’s bright and vulnerable and moves smoothly throughout. It naturally pulled me in and prepped me for the rest of the album. It's also proving to be a hot single, and has been climbing the charts since February.
“Crush Forever” (track four) is where Metric crammed most of their electronic inspirations. Emily Haines shapes her voice to emulate electropop standards. It’s easy to compare her to Ladytron or Lady Gaga here. It’s futuristic in the way 2000s house/dance music had a futuristic vibe.
Metric has a habit of building up their verses into “good enough” territory instead of “holy crap, this totally exploded.” I hear it in “Time Is A Bomb” and “Tremolo” (tracks three and five), where the choruses don't hit quite like I’d like them to, so there’s no complete release — although maybe that's the goal. “As If You’re Here” and “Loyal” (tracks seven and eight) give their choruses a bit more oomph, with the pre-choruses building them to open up like a window on a bright spring morning.
Track nine, "Antigravity,” drew me in the mos, I think because it has the angst my little high school self loves. The synth reminds me of “Kids” by Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein, written for Stranger Things. Haines molds her voice to match the airiness of the guitar and drum machine, making for a seriously dreamy piece of music.
I have nights where my foot is itching to press down on a gas pedal. A highway or an empty backroad always soothes this itch, but not without a proper playlist. Dark wave is usually my pick for these kinds of drives; I need something echoey and cold and foggy to achieve full isolation and focus on the road. Romanticize The Dive fits the bill perfectly without being boxed into this one situation. It’s a lighthouse in a sea of black. It’s Metric.
