ART OF DOUBT

Metric

IT’S hard to believe that the frontwoman of Metric, Emily Haines, turned 44 earlier this year, when her voice still has the youthful carefree quality we first heard in Metric 20 years ago.

It’s been two decades? The band has a huge following back in its home country of Canada, but elsewhere in the world it is not an established me, but that’s always been its dus operandi. So determined were members to not be swept up with trends in music (they’ve always n solitary in creativity ), so much that they put together Metric Music International, a music label, ensuring they would never have to take instructions from pesky label executives.

It’s hard to credit one particular person with the origins or the success of a particular genre, but Metric certainly was one of the earliest music makers involved in a synth-pop revival, alongside the likes of Ladytron and Cut Copy.

While the aforementioned names made music of a darker nature and stuck almost exclusively to the electronic sound, Metric always maintained the rock band element in its music, as is evident in the opening track to Art Of Doubt, Dark Saturday.

After which, the familiar synths of the Metric of old return redoubled, and it sounds like the members are still in a state of open rebellion, 20 years from their first foray into the music scene. It isn’t always that you can say more of the same stuff is a good thing, in this case it is.

Rating: 4/5