METRIC
Live it Out
Last Gang
CONTROLLER. CONTROLLER
X-amounts
Paper Bag Records
· Female-fronted Canadian dance-rock bands offer more of the same. Controller.Controller play Broken City on October 21 and Metric play MacEwan Hall on October 26.
To criticize Metric and Controller.Controller for delivering followup albums that are similar to their debuts would be naive, considering they had such success with those albums. Both bands released catchy albums perfectly timed to ride the punk-funk dance floor wave and they managed to become indie darlings as a result. Why change the formula when people are just getting into it?
To be fair, even with disco beats and heavy synths, Metric was always more rock and their latest, Live it Out, moves further from the dance floor. Front woman Emily Haines has perfected her sexy-sassy vocal strut and longing groans, and the album contains a few knockout punches in the form of "Monster Hospital" and "Empty." Even when the other songs don’t hit as hard, Live it Out offers considerably less filler than their debut, Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?
On the flipside, Controller.Controller don’t do anything different, and it’s for the best. Blending big bass lines and relentless stomping percussion, X-amounts is tense and slippery in all the right places (even when they crib Hot Hot Heat). Nirmala Basnayake’s vocals are as strong as ever and her lyrics are still laced with ’80s references (though she has traded Rockwell for Hall & Oates). For those who loved the band’s debut EP, but thought it was too short, this is the perfect solution. If you’ve never heard them, then any griping about the past is moot.
METRIC 3/5
CONTROLLER 3/5
JASON LEWIS
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