New Music 2012 - Part 14 - Metric 'Synthetica'

Metric will release its fifth studio album on June 11 in the UK and June 12 in North America (that is simply a chart-counting related issue).  This is the album art now that I have reduced it from 3690 x 3690 pixels to a more manageable, unless that is you want to project it on to a large flat wall, 800 x 800 pixels!

The usual problem with pre-release album art is that it is small and grainy; so even making it workable at 320 x 320 pixels for use in the side-bar of the blog can be a challenge. That is not a problem in this case but on the other hand I have never seen Metric live, which is something I might just have to put right this year and, because I can certainly do so, this is the track list:

  

SYNTHETICA
1.     Artificial Nocturne
2.     Youth Without Youth
3.     Speed The Collapse
4.     Breathing Underwater
5.     Drums So Real
6.     Lost Kitten
7.     The Void
8.     Synthetica
9.     Clone
10.   The Wanderlust
11.    Nothing But Time
  
Their second studio album 'Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?' (2005) was one of the first I ever posted a comment on and as such it pre-dates this blog. Rather more importantly I still love it to bits!  

Canada, then...

To some extent this (the wealth of new Canadian music) was where my curiosity for new music really started again. The rest was to follow, naturally enough, but it had to start somewhere and I'm about to reveal the original, before Arcade Fire, culprit:

Metric - Old World Underground, Where Are You Now (2003)

It however was not the first thing they recorded, and it is true that the new Canadian scene is more complicated than you could imagine because in 1999-2000 the proto-Metric (Emily Haines and James Shaw) were in London. Sometimes they were in the restaurant above the Bricklayers' Arms, 63 Charlotte Street, Shoreditch, talking about recording deals they knew they would never get. They got a free lunch, which was better than beans on toast, but otherwise they were spot on when it came to the reality of the deal.
They had nearly completed an album too, done on the cheap while holding down day jobs, but eventually they went back across the Atlantic in the hope that someone might like them more.
The toil in London eventually paid dividends but, until recently, that album has not been released on CD and it still isn't in the UK...

Metric - Grow Up and Blow Away (Last Gang Records Q2 00940)

Metric finally made it with 'Old World Underground, Where Are you Now' (Everloving, EVE006) and then a second studio album 'Live It Out' in 2006. In the meantime, while many of the band are also very much involved with Broken Social Scene, Emily Haines has also released her (second) kinda solo album. Knives Don't Have Your Back - Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton (2007) and also the less well known 12" EP What Is Free To A Good Home? (2007).

It is also available on CD, if you must, but the story certainly doesn't start or end here!