På radioen igen

Played my first show on KPSU today. (If you didn’t catch it, the podcast is here.) Despite managing to forget approximately 98% of my Danish vocabulary, I think it went fairly well. There were no technical difficulties, except for when I dropped the keyboard on top of the sound board and turned off the CD input in the middle of a song. It actually only took me a few seconds to figure this out and correct it, which is something of a fluke, considering my history. Anyway, her er min spilleliste:

1. Teignmouth – Patrick Wolf
2. Byen Driver – Under Byen
3. Drown them Out – Viva Voce
4. Emily Scott – Esiotrot
5. Old Friends – the Bear Quartet
6. Ronan Keating – Free Loan Investments
7. Grisslappan RADIOaktiv – epo-555
8. Dance 3 – Kiss Me Deadly
9. The Voices – Citizens Here and Abroad
10. Empire State Human – Marsheaux
11. Strangelove – Tiger Baby
12. Graycoated Morning – David & the Citizens

In between talk breaks, I discovered that KPSU has a nice promo copy of Metric’s new/old album, Grow Up and Blow Away. (New/old because it was done in 2001, but was never released, and is now -- finally -- being put out again; you can buy it as of Tuesday, actually.) I’ve been waiting for it for months, so of course I had to give it a listen. And I was rather disappointed.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Metric is super excellent live, and decent -- but not really that excellent -- on recordings. There were two songs in particular that I was excited for. The first, Rock Me Now. Until today, I’d only heard it once -- and that was nearly a year ago, when they played it live at Bumbershoot. It was a rather electrified version, and Jimmy Shaw managed to falsetto even higher than Emily Haines does. I loved it. So I played the album version right away. It kind of sucks.

The second song I wanted to hear was Soft Rock Star. I’d fallen in love with the remixed version however long ago, and was looking forward to hearing the original. I should know by now that, generally, I like remixes a lot better than I like originals -- but in this case, I didn’t actually know it was a remix. I thought, ‘wow, this might be the best song Metric’s ever done.’ It isn’t -- and especially after hearing and loving the alternate version so much, it isn’t even very good.

I hate to discourage people listening to Metric, because they are a pretty awesome band, and, of all the bands I currently listen to, they’re one of the ones I’ve liked the longest. However, I guess they just weren’t quite as good in 2001 as they were in 2005 or even 2003. Grow Up and Blow Away is an okay album (the title track is especially nice), but I’d stick to Old World Underground… and Live It Out if I were you. Those, and MSTRKRFT’s Monster Hospital remix. Talk about good.

--DL--
Ashtrays Podcast (6-29-2007)