Metric

Recently released after being available free on the internet since it’s conception “sometime between 1999 and 2001,” Grow Up and Blow Away is the latest new old release by the Canadian group Metric. Recorded in a New York apartment primarily by singer Emily Haines and fellow Metric member Jimmy Shaw, Grow Up is described by the duo as “a record of innocence,” made in the days before the group exploded onto the music scene with their sophisticated and ironic hit Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? and it’s more rocked-out follow up, Live It Out. In the retrospective liner notes, the duo reminisces about the recording, musing “…when we listen back we hear some kids with day jobs trying to work a drum machine recording a feeling breathing diesel trucks.”

Listening to the album now, not having discovered it on the internet before its release, and having been a huge fan of Old World, I’m grateful the band didn’t grow up and blow away, but also grateful that I didn’t discover them in their New York apartment days. Listening to the album now is almost a voyeuristic experience, like watching an awkward adolescent suffer through puberty with the knowledge that she’ll grow up to be a beauty someday. The potential is there, but her confidence isn’t.

The first two tracks on the album open with a similar feel to most of the songs on Old World, with a drum machine charting the course for the electro-pop groove that suggests their eventual style. Many of the other tracks, however, seem to struggle to find their niche, veering through genres at high speed without meeting a target. “Raw Sugar” dabbles in an almost pop-turned-funk sound, while the following track, “White Gold,” sounds vaguely like something that would be played in an off-Broadway piano bar.

Throughout most of the tracks Haines’ vocal sounds thin and oddly too high pitched, as if it’s actually a recording of a younger sister rather than the Emily we know and love. In “The Twist,” she alternates between a strange falsetto and an all-too-low rasp that borders on spoken word, as if she’s testing out both singing styles in the same track.

For those of you who have been eagerly awaiting a new Metric release, don’t fret: It’s not all bad. To listen to the album is to experience a great band becoming a great band. When Emily sings, “you are everything, you are nothing at all,” on “Hardwire,” it’s vaguely eerie. Did they know what was in store for them when they sat down with their newly discovered drum machine? I like to think so. Just into the first track, “Grow Up and Blow Away,” there is already that quality that Metric seems to possess to make them unforgettable. I don’t know if it’s the catchy beat that they seem to capture on every song or the lines that stick, such as, “if this is the life, why does it feel so good to die today?” but by the end of the track it’s branded into my head for the rest of the week. Even from the beginning, Metric had a way of being remembered, even if it took them a little while to really grow up.

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