Metric: "Synthetica"

Artist: Metric

Album: Synthetica

 

Released: 2012

 

 

Synthetica is Metric's fifth album, and the follow up to the excellent 'Fantasies', released in 2009.

 

More reflective, and a bit less poppy than 'Fantasies', the album features a few more synth ballads and a few less guitar hooks, not to say that this is necessarily a bad thing; while it would have been good to hear another album like 'Fantasies', it's always good to hear a band challenge themselves and try something a little different, even if what's here is not a big change in musical direction from what Metric have explored before.

 

The album starts off with a run of four uptempo songs, "Artificial Nocturne" and lead single "Youth Without Youth" kicking the album into life. Things slow down on track five "Dreams So Real", then the album varies from song to song.

 

The obvious theme here is suggested by the album's title and many of the song titles; most of the songs explore reality, the synthetic, and darkness, themes befitting the gloomy atmospherics created by the music.

 

It's not all good; closing track "Nothing But Time" is the dullest song here, especially as it follows album highlight "The Wanderlust" (featuring Lou Reed). "Lost Kitten" and "Clone" (two of the album's slower songs), are also fairly mediocre and slow the album down in the middle after it had made such a good start.

 

Overall, this is a more than decent album, though it may not win over anyone who's not already a Metric fan. The slower songs are definitely the weak point of the album, even if you can understand why they're here.

 

Best song: The Wanderlust

 

Rating: 3.5/5