I narrowly missed seeing Metric play at the Fine Line last Monday night. With radio airplay in some of the nation’s hipper cities and a recent write-up in that springboard to momentary indie rock fame, Spin magazine (the headline: “44 Bands You Need to Hear Now!”), it was not unreasonable that I assumed Metric had top billing. But Metric were already back in the van when we arrived at the Fine Line, and dropped $12 for a 45-minute set from British popsters South. The four blokes of South combined plaintive Brit Pop, Sonic Youth-like distortion and electronic noise into a musical package that was, well, confusing. And as I fretted over how I was going to pick up the pieces of my disappointing evening and mold them into a story about South’s performance, I finally decided to screw journalistic convention and write about the band that I didn’t see. Metric’s first full-length, Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?, may be old news—it was released over five months ago—but it’s my article and I like them, so I am making them new news.

Metric was originally the project of long-time musical collaborators Emily Haines (vocals, keyboards) and James Shaw (guitar); they later filled out their sound by picking a drummer and bassist. Haines and Shaw are both professionally trained musicians, but as Metric they keep it simple and accessible. Though the prominent synths make Metric a part of the growing pool of hip New Wave revivalists in rock music, fundamentally what they make are straightforward, dancy, hook-filled pop songs that you can’t bleach out of your brain. One of the better of these, the infectious dance anthem “Dead Disco,” comes in urgently with a pounding drum track, layering on spiky guitar and a synth line simpler than “Heart and Soul,” all to fabulous effect.

Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?, laborious title notwithstanding, was one of the best new albums that I heard in 2003. Driven and energized, yet coolly detached, it plays like a nighttime cruise through a big-city downtown. Whirling synths surround like glassy skyscrapers, and the tight, punchy rhythm section pounds in time with the flashes of passing streetlights. Rhythmic and precise, the keyboards, guitars and drums mingle like city traffic, intersecting sharply at right angles.

Unlike so many in contemporary rock, Metric tries to make sense of the confused milieu of our post-modern world without falling into the sinkhole of whiny introspection. Haines’ lyrics are the musings of a thoughtful woman who explains the world by watching it, rather than exploring her personal experience and painting the world in its forlorn image. Her vocals are alternately sassy, playful and scolding, though they always retain a composure that makes them more detached than outrightly emotional. Haines seems less pissed off at our frantic consumer culture than she is taken aback by its thoughtlessness and wind-whipped by its inertia. In “Succexy” she peers wide-eyed at the way that Americans consumed the Iraq war like entertainment in the form of flashy, caffeine-charged TV news segments. The album’s most earnest track, “Calculation,” is a modern folk song, commenting on urban anomie against the backdrop of a simple synth melody: “Sleep don’t pacify us until/ Daybreaks, sky lights up the grid we live in/Dizzy when we talk so fast/Fields of numbers streaming past.”

There may be nothing truly groundbreaking on Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?, but what it does do, it does well. And as I learned from seeing South’s unique musical cross-fertilization, sometimes breaking ground breaks shovels, or at the very least breaks the wills of some members of the audience to stay for the encore. Buy Metric’s album and love it like your own.