Metric Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? Everloving brought to you by Steve May It would be unfair to dismiss Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? off-hand as Cars-infected Interpol as fronted by the singer of the Cardigans, or less flatteringly, one of the former frontwomen of Veruca Salt. The wheezing Moogs, synth-pads, chugging guitars, and obsessive emphasis on the beat are all present and a bit too well accounted for, as if Metric was careful not to miss anything. Indisputably, the band has hipster credentials out the wazoo. In an apparent ongoing attempt to find the mythical Ultimate Scene in the World, they have lived in Toronto, Williamsburg, London, and Los Angeles, according to their press kit; singer/keyboardist Emily Haines – formerly of the not-quite-seminal-if-ultimately well-meaning Broken Social Scene – reportedly went so far as to share living quarters with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, which could only have been interesting ("Karen, could you come and get your smelly leg warmer off my iMac?"). The album contains the now-obligatory Knack musical reference (in "Wet Blanket") and a guitar lick lifted almost directly from the Cure's "A Forest" ("Dead Disco") which seems wrong to me mostly because it is so obvious. But in Metric's defense, strategic theft and appropriation goes all the way back to St. John Lennon, and the aforementioned Interpol did it to occasionally stunning effect last year, and the Strokes – by far the best of the Yes New York bands – are masters of the art (or is it craft?). Haines's lyrics are pitched halfway between standard Brooklyn/Los Angeles scenester concerns like going out ("The List") and clothing ("On a Slow Night") and, more compellingly, the War on Terror ("All we do is talk/sit split screens/As the homeland plans enemies"); I wish only that someone in the band had talked her out of naming the latter song "Succexy." Most notable here are Haines's vocals, which are given priority and slide and strut proudly atop the wedding cake of beats and analog synths and processed guitars. Her singing is well-mannered and technically good but also detached, with the effect of making the bourgeoisie lyrical concerns seem more believable than the War on Terror ones; stuff like "Every 10-year-old enemy soldier/Thinks falling bombs are shooting stars sometimes" seems cheap and easy when juxtaposed with the closer's mantra, "Dead disco! Dead funk! Dead rock & roll!" But this is above-all a dance-pop record, so the most important questions are necessarily: how are the songs, and can you dance to them? The songs here are pretty good and mostly danceable, thanks mostly to an incredibly tight rhythm section and an abundance of hooks ("Combat Baby" in particular is so irresistibly dumb and hooky that even old Dick Cheney would be moved to dance to it if he were drunk enough.) I'm not sure if it's possible to have too many hooks, but on Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? they are frequently sequenced so close together that it's easy lose track of the good ones. There's an epic moment at the end of "On a Slow Night" in which the band stretches out and becomes a powerful, convincing synth-symphony; it caught me completely off-guard because mostly it made me feel something, which is the only time I felt anything listening to Metric. Metric Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? Goldfrapp Black Cherry Fleetwood Mac Say You Will DJ Dara Breakbeat Science Exercise 01 The 88 Kind of Light The Kills Black Rooster EP The Libertines Up the Bracket Jettatura Squadra Fantasma Tone Ambient Metals The Streets Original Pirate Material Grand Buffet Cigarette Beach Roni Size Touching Down Rolling Stones 40 Licks Brendan Benson Lapalco Anticon Music for the Advancement of Hip-Hop copyright © 2000-2005 - www.stellargirl.com