Help, I'm alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer.

I'm not gonna thank myself for this tomorrow but I need to write something so here's a review of Metric's album, Fantasies. It was actually released on April 7, 2009, which for some reason amazes me, because it's now 2011 of course. So much has happened in that time. I guess all time is is what happens during it.

Firstly, I'll say that Fantasies has to be my favourite album ever. I feel/ felt so connected to it and connected to Metric's music when I first listened to it. I had recently come to know Metric's music. Their 'Live It Out' album is nothing short of brilliant as well. After Live It Out, I was sceptical as to whether Metric could produce anything close again but it seems that they did. At the time of writing Fantasies, Emily Haines, Metric's iconic lead singer, had became scared about the future and she now admits that she was contemplating never writing again and quitting Metric. She did actually 'go solo' for a time before she wrote Fantasies. She created a new one-person act which went by the name of 'Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton' and released an album interestingly named: 'Knives Don't Have Your Back'. It is actually pretty good itself so I would recommend checking it out. I think it's fair to say she has enough talent to put Elvis to shame.

Fantasies received good reviews from almost every publication but, personally, anything less than a five out of five for the album is a bit churlish. On most albums, there are a few songs it seems are shoved in just to make the album seem like better value for money but that isn't the case here. I would almost stretch to saying that all ten songs would make it in to my favourite 100 songs list, almost anyway. It's hard to pick out the highlights but if my life depended on it, I'd say the three supreme tracks are: 'Blindness', 'Help, I'm Alive', and 'Collect Call'.

During Emily's difficult time where she struggled for artistic creativity, she travelled to Buenos Aires and stayed for a while. She said: 'I went there because it was the one place I felt that I could discover for myself, and I didn't know a single person, which was important. The songs that I wrote here were the simplest and clearest writing that I've done in my life'.



I think Metric have always been fairly difficult to define. They are obviously a rock band but they have often dabbled with digital keyboards, making them more of a 'new wave' group. I'd suggest that if you're the type of 'muso' (as the Aussies say) who likes bands who write good lyrics and play knife-sharp, skin-piercing guitar riffs, then Metric could be a band for you.

Blindness lyrics:

Send us a blindfold, send us a blade
Tell the survivors help is on the way
 
I was a blindfold, never complained
All the survivors singing in the rain
I was the one with the world at my feet

Got us a battle, leave it up to me

Find us a trap door, find us a plane
Tell the survivors help is on the way

I was a blindfold never complained
All the survivors singing in the rain
I was the one with the world at my feet
Got us a battle, leave it up to me

What it is and where it stops nobody knows
You gave me a life I never chose

I wanna leave but the world won't let me go
I wanna leave but the world won't let me go

What it is and where it stops nobody knows
You gave me a life I never chose

I was the one with the world at my feet
Got us a battle, leave it up to me