Album Review

Metric – Help I’m Alive

• 16th Feb 2009

Critics rashly and a little harshly stabbed out Cat Power wannabe accusations at the colourful Canadian, Emily Haines for her debut solo album that was produced with the backing of her own band The Soft Skeleton.

Now, Haines slips comfortably back into her spacey, empirically atmospheric, sonic thumping jacket, otherwise known as Metric. In doing so, she replicates the uncompromising strut of Katie-Jane Garside, shunning the lazy Cat Power comparisons both provocatively and boldly.

Sturdy bass-lines illuminate Haines’ creepy, yet authoritative range and it makes their forthcoming 4th album a potentially shattering prospect. Our Emily seems to come alive when accompanied by the spindling guitar strokes of James Shaw (who is also a fellow Broken Social Scene collaborator).

In April of this year, it will be four albums in for this experimental Canadian troupe and on this evidence, they certainly still measure up.