Metric haven’t had the easiest time earning respect. First they operated in the towering shadow of epic Canadian mega-band Broken Social Scene, who just so happened to release one of the finest indie-rock albums of all-time with 2002’s You Forgot it in People. But the further Metric have distanced themselves from the genre, swelling gradually into all-out arena-pop territory (and peaking in commercial viability with 2009’s Fantasies), they’ve been increasingly pegged as streamlined sell-outs.
It’s unfair to criticize Metric for “going pop,” since, well, they have every right to record whatever kind of music they want. The problem is that they’ve lost a great deal of spark and originality in the process. Continuing down Fantasies’ arena-rock/new-wave trajectory and committing to it even more rigidly, the appropriately titled Synthetica nearly always sounds wonderful but often feels empty.
“Youth Without Youth” pushes everything to the max: fuzz-bass, vocoder, polished arena-sized drums that snap with the breakneck, bulldozing subtlety of Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll pt. II.” Emily Haines’ once wondrous (and often fragile) voice is reduced to a soulless, auto-tuned characterization. “We played double-dutch with a hand grenade,” she sings—but there’s absolutely no danger here.