Pitchfork

I want to like Metric, I really do. After first seeking out the band thanks to singer Emily Haines' beatific, pitch-palsied performance on Broken Social Scene's immaculate "Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl", my hopes were unrealistically high. I was inevitably disappointed with their full-length debut, Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?: Its new wave spunk and blunt cynicism hardly an apt musical foundation for Haines, who I prematurely pegged as a quaint little-girl-lost indie savant. Still, the album had its moments, particularly when the singer's aching vocals and bubbly synths were brought to the fore as on the haunting "Calculation Theme". Clearly, this was Haines' show, and I hoped future releases would embrace that oh-so-blatant fact. Too bad then, that this sub par follow-up, with its dated post-grunge and neu-disco harangues, doesn't even measure up to Underground.

Produced by guitarist Jimmy Shaw, Live It Out annoyingly revels in its rote, echo-laden aural milieu, while putting Shaw's unremarkable six-string scrapes in high relief. The press release suggests Sonic Youth's Goo as an touchstone but, directly opposed to that shifty-guitar-driven work, Live It Out is mired in a past-ripe '90s Pro Tools precision that edges dangerously close to Modern Rock tastelessness.

The band's blunt liberal leanings are still the main lyrical catalyst, but rather than skewering the Orwellian state of North America with its sarcasm and biting barbs, Metric often come off as didactic and smug. "Buy this car to drive to work/ Drive to work to pay for this car," goes the overly obvious and simplistic cyclical refrain to "Handshakes". When given the opportunity to move her band's lyrics into more winking territory live, Haines is able to deflate such over earnest musings with a cartoony thumbs-up; without that necessary context, such sentiments often miss their mark.

The quartet work best when they sidestep loud guitars and lyrics for softer, more refined styles. Once again, the album's best song, "The Police and the Private" is a mainly Haines affair, her roundabout keyboard working in lush lockstep with her plaintive vocal melody. Mysteriously dystopic, Haines coos about a near future in which people are "felt up and fingerprinted waiting for the train." Tapping into modern day fears and the forever-blurred line between commerce and state, the song eschews snide snarls for a purposeful paranoia--and is all the better for it. Alas, it dodges greatness by tacking on a wholly unnecessary minute-long instrumental outro that markedly lessens its overall impact.

With its silly experimental excesses (the hushed, groove disarming French whisper on "Poster of a Girl", nearly all of the six-minute "Empty") Live It Out is stymied by lame riffing and unqualified wonkage. In light of yet another brilliant collaboration with Broken Social Scene (the ineffably sweet "Swimmers") and the flashes of brilliance she has shown in her own band, I still think Haines has the potential to release an unapologetic indie-rock treasure. But, as this misguided disc bores out, she'll probably have to strike out on her own to do so.