C'mon, get happy

The power of positive thinking is a philosophy beloved by Oprah acolytes and followers of The Secret, but it's not typically embraced by jaded rock stars. Certainly, it's the last thing you'd expect to hear from a band like Toronto's Metric, which brought us Patriarch on a Vespa, a cryptic tune that concludes when the titular rider "runs a red and ends up/Crushed under the wheel."

And yet Fantasies, the band's new album, is an exercise in optimism. The feeling runs through even the tiniest details of the music, from Metric's newfound predilection for major-key melodies down to the dreamy production.

This approach, the band claims, is a direct response to the exhausting tour of their last album, the Polaris Music Prize-nominated Live It Out (2006). Metric frontwoman Emily Haines has described that record as "an itemized list of everything that's f---ed up in the world," and spending close to 300 days on the road performing those songs nearly broke them, individually and as a band.

Haines and bandmates Jimmy Shaw, Joules Scott-Key and Joshua Winstead realized that in writing that album, they were effectively "creating a reality for ourselves."

"And you're stuck in it for the next three years," sighs guitarist Shaw, "because you've gotta sing about it every night."

Adds Haines, "Now we understand the process well enough to know that you have to create what you want to be true. I think we're all pretty clear on what's broken [in the world] now. That's not really a contribution at this point, to highlight it one more time. Sonically, we wanted to move into a realm that we hadn't been in, and with the writing, we tried to create how we wanted to feel, rather than focusing on what we felt at the moment."

Make no mistake, the members of Metric are not trying to produce their own Shiny Happy People. But Fantasies is brighter and more expansive than anything the band has done to date, with an emphasis on clean, simple melodies. Shaw claims that producer Gavin Brown demanded that each song pass "the campfire test" in order to make the cut. (Says Shaw, "If it doesn't work with just acoustic guitar and voice, then there's something wrong with the tune itself.")

Haines, who is responsible for Metric's lyrics, is well acquainted with anxiety and emotional turmoil, which she articulated so well on her 2006 solo effort, Knives Don't Have Your Back. But on Fantasies, she moves away from more abstract imagery to concrete, direct statements. "I'm not suicidal/I just can't get out of bed," she sings on the driving, electro-juiced Satellite Mind. Elsewhere, her frank lyrics convey a kind of guarded hope. The track Twilight Galaxy finds Haines cajoling, "If you're not alright now/come on baby/I'll pick you up/and take you/anywhere you want" over a shimmery cloud of muted keyboards. The buoyant chorus of Sick Muse reminds us that "Everybody just wanna fall in love/Everybody just wanna play the lead."

Shaw, who co-produced the album, insists he didn't look to other music as a touchstone for the dreamier sound of Fantasies. Rather, he looked to Stanley Kubrick. That may seem odd, since the late director was known as a master of shrewd, surreal satire. Shaw says he wanted the album "to sound like a place that nobody had ever been, but that also felt like home and like everything we'd always known."

"I feel like I got that from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey," he explains. "I remember we watched that movie really early on, and the sequence at the end, with the colours and the eye and the polarizing. The concept of trying to inhabit the space of everything-ness was honestly more inspirational to me than any record."

Over the course of three full-length albums, a project that started as a trip-hoppy duo in a New York City loft 11 years ago has become a stadium-sized beast sharing bills with the Rolling Stones and Bloc Party. Metric's efforts to manage their moods through their music seems to be part of a mission to take back control of an internationally acclaimed band that's overtaken the lives of its members.

This hands-on approach led to Metric's decision to break with its label and release Fantasies independently outside of Canada. The band members are also taking pains to manage their own public images. Last December, Haines posted a rather intense video on the band's website. Shot in Buenos Aires, the clip was in part a trailer for the group's forthcoming album. Mostly, though, the footage seemed like a public confessional for Haines. In it, she discussed how writer's block and a general depression had led her to flee to South America.

"It's a nice way to, uh, terminate gossip," Haines says now. "You want gossip? This is what's f---ing going on, I'll tell you: I was bummed out.

"I don't feel like there's this huge distance between me and the public. I have absolutely nothing to hide. I think if people like the band, that's part of what they like. I'm not gonna pretend that I don't get f---ing nervous. I'm not gonna pretend that it's not terrifying and sometimes really depressing and, like, you get totally lonely and freaked out and it's really competitive and I'm not always up for it and sometimes I feel really stupid and sometimes I feel really great.

"I feel like that old 'I'm a rock star' sheen is just bullshit," she continues. "That energy should be directed into putting on an amazing live show. If I have the chance, I'll come down in a giant light bulb, I swear to god. I love it. I think we should go as far as possible with staging and amazing performance. That's where the ego and showmanship and everything should fly and be fun and entertaining. As opposed to pretending that you don't feel anything."

Fantasies is in stores now.

Sarah Liss writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.