Metric w/New LP, Free MP3

Emily Haines also slated for new issue of BLURT.

By Blurt Staff

With Metric's fourth full length studio album Fantasies en route April 14 (it's to be released on the band's own, newly-formed label Metric Music International), frontwoman Emily Haines has been talking to BLURT, naturally. She'll be in our debut print issue (due at newsstands March 24), and as she puts it, of the band's decision to go the grassroots route, "I think it was the logical decision we made. We weighed our options, entertained a lot of scenarios, and strangely, this was the safest move. [The record companies] wanted to get between us and our fans. I am constantly amazed by what's possible when you get an audience in a room. It's rock ‘n' roll church. We need it as much as our audience needs it."

The followup to 2005's highly acclaimed Live It Out, Fantasies  was written by the band in a farmhouse outside Seattle following what the band describes as "a soul-cleansing sojourn to Argentina" by Haines. Fantasies is a densely textured modern mix of psychedelia, electro, and rock with a "really big and really dreamy" sound, says guitarist/co-founder Jimmy Shaw.

Haines added, in a press release,  "For me, the major influences on the record were the places we wrote it: Bear Creek, this utopian farmhouse studio, and then our own studio in Toronto, which definitely brought in the electro, dance and rock elements because the city feels so good right now and so many of our musician friends were around. And then for me, being in Buenos Aires, most of the songs I brought to this record came out of being in exile with just a piano and a guitar. And then in the final stages, mixing at Electric Lady in NYC brought everything around."

Track Listing:

Help I'm Alive
Sick Muse
Satellite Mind
Twilight Galaxy
Gold Guns Girls
Gimme Sympathy
Collect Call
Front Row
Blindness
Stadium Love

Metric is offering fans a free download of the acoustic version of "Help I'm Alive".  This version will not appear on the album and is offered for free in exchange for an email address.  All you have to do is enter your email address in the widget below and you'll receive the MP3 in only a couple of minutes.