There are a small handful of albums that came out when we moved to Seattle that are precious to me. It's hard to describe, but that year, 2009, felt little bit like the big music transition I experienced starting in 1993-ish. That was the year that we moved beyond a few mainstream grunge records, and got to a place where the "alternative rock" movement was really happening.
Whether or not that occurred on a broader scale is not clear to me. All I know is that I moved to Seattle, where I listened to the local alt rock radio station, and then a few months later, when Simon was born, I started listening to AltNation on SiriusXM. I got into Thirty Seconds to Mars, Phoenix, The Yeah Yeah Yeah's, Muse, MGMT, Passion Pit, and a bunch of others, but essential to that period was the album Fantasies from Metric. That album was SO f'ing good.
Their next album didn't come until we were back in Cleveland. In 2012 they released Synthetica, and I loved it. Before that, they also had a couple of great singles that appeared in the Twilight and Scott Pilgrim movies (and then Brie Larson covered "Black Sheep!"). Pagans in Vegas came out in 2015 and I didn't care much for it. They leaned into their electronic side, and not in a good way. I skipped Art of Doubt in 2018, maybe because it didn't even get airplay on SiriusXM. But then, last year, Formentera came out, and while they exercised their electronic ability, they also leaned back into guitars. The album opens with this epic, ten-minute song called "Doomscroller." It's pretty great.
Earlier this year, they announced, "Hey, that was technically gonna be a double album," meaning that Formentera II would be out this month. And what do you know, it's fucking brilliant. It really does complement the first part. There's a song called "Suckers" in particular that I absolutely adore.
It's funny how all of my enduring favorites seem to be rock bands with female singers and some level of satisfying noise (see also, Garbage and Wolf Alice). I should probably go back to that Metric album that I missed.
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