Metro

“Metro”. “Metro?” “Metro!” “Metro… Who are them?”

Forgive me, Robert Owens, for pinching once again your line about "alleged anonymity" as a comeback, but it fits this band like a glove.

So, let's imagine for a moment peeping through the keyhole at an ordinary day of lessons at the "University of Pop" in Fantasyland. Today's topic: interactions between glam rock and progressive. The young professor, testing the waters, opens with a blunt question: "So, who can tell me something about Metro?". Dead silence. "Come on, nobody's raising a hand?", he laments. "Ah right, the 'Criminal World' guys!", answers a small clique of David Bowie fans (the class know-it-alls), still recalling the cover doled out by the Thin White Duke on "Let's Dance". "Right, but what else do you know about them?", the teacher presses on. Dead silence again. Frustrated, the little man takes off his monocle and, handing the kids a shrink-wrapped vinyl (a wasted effort: nowadays you can "conveniently" find it on CD, in the 2005 Sanctuary reissue), sends them home to study.

And how much our heroes learn over the course of the afternoon! First of all, that the English band was led by Duncan Browne, a refined "baroque" storyteller devoted to the most fairy-tale-like Donovan, who rose to critical acclaim for his renaissance-tinged phrasing later absorbed by newcomer Nick Drake. The little gem "Give Me Take You" (1968) put all his talent on display, but sold such laughably small numbers that it quickly - and unfairly - fell into oblivion. Then nothing much (a brief collaboration with Keith Emerson's Nice, the single "Journey" which at least managed to enter the UK charts, a second, self-titled album that was a photocopy of its predecessor) until he met Peter Godwin and decided to form Metro: a futuristic hypothesis of new romantic, risen from the ashes of glam rock and steeped in folk bogs, which the audience of 1977 sensationally turned its back on.

Had it been released at the time it was conceived - that is, almost three years earlier, in '74 - one might almost speak of a miracle for a debut like this. But no matter: it's already miraculous that the record, despite its resounding commercial failure, managed to anticipate trends and sounds that would become à la page in the following decade.

Just look at the two gentlemen on the cover to realize who Japan secretly took style and bearing lessons from. Sure, the futuristic, angular make-up that would define new romantic is still missing: here, instead, everything sails in the fertile waters of a vaguely elegant-disco look, all softness of line, an outfit cleverly played out in three base colors, and fake roses in the buttonhole. A white, English, arty version of the Gucci-style of the Nile Rodgers & Bernard Edwards duo, all things considered.

Already delighted by the stylishness of the artwork, our little students finally drop the record on the turntable, and right on cue comes the revelation of "Criminal World" in its original version. Play "Little Critic" at home too: art-glam decadence, quasi-progressive harmonic constructions, "funky" basslines (courtesy of John Giblin), sharp but tightly reined-in electric guitars (Browne's and Sean Lyons's), killer moog (Godwin), driving rhythm section (the "monstrous" Simon Phillips, already with 801 and later with Roxy Music, Pete Townshend, Mike Oldfield, etc.), and often incredibly flirting with disco's "pumped-up kick drum and fat off-beat hi-hat" formula. All of it held together by a rare formal elegance and delicacy of harmony, as well as by the candor - that subtly diabolical candor that could have belonged to a Marc Bolan - of Godwin's voice, a beardless angel thrown into a trash bin and condemned to rot in the slum of (un)civil society.

But the best part is that "Criminal World" is only the first of nine masterpieces; masterpieces for the refinement of the compositional framework, the variety of accents, the mastery of the production. Just listen, in this regard, to the lingering choruses, the sensual swaying of the nylon strings and the polished drums of the devastating "Flame"; or the atonal synths, à la Tangerine Dream, that open "Overture", soon sucked into a whirlpool of bass greased up with wah-wah and feline drumming closely reminiscent of the aforementioned 801 project by Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera (that is, the exact point where glam - if it can still be called that - fades into prog and eyes new wave).

Whether they're pumping up the reverb to create oases of shimmering stasis (is that David Sylvian of "Brilliant Trees" anticipated by a good ten years in the first two minutes of "Flame"?) or softening rare hard-edged outbursts ("Mono Messiah"), Browne and Lyons's guitars interlock with a dancer's grace, as if gliding smoothly over the silk of an evening scarf. Brazenly "lowbrow" enough to dare sidestep the chorus of "Precious" (creamy, vaguely 10cc-like) and replace it with soloing climbs and obsessively repeated piano refrains (but then again, everyone's the boss in their own house...).

Shall we talk about the folk influences, then? Let's do it, bringing up "Black Lace Shoulder" and its tangled weave of acoustic guitars, gypsy violin and percussion run riot (though we should also throw "Paris" into the mix, which at heart sounds like a West Coast folk song "reimagined" in the manner of British pipers): once again, it's small touches of sound and arrangement that make the difference and create contrast, heightening the ambiguities of a music that's sordidly Luciferian beneath its seemingly composed "facade".

And yes, because the microcosm inhabited by Metro is ruled by the iron law of "homo homini lupus", by domination as the equivalent of "the fair untangling of social dynamics". A virulent habitat where you gamble your life away in a single night, amid paid sex in venues of dubious hygiene and midnight snacks of ultraviolence. A "cabaret of cruelty" for smirking little princelings with a tattooed tear on the cheek. A "glamorous", thoroughly British Bronx ("The sides of London the tourists never see", as Mastro-Lydon would later sing with Pil) where the two "Metro-nighthawks" move with the innate grace of those who watch without getting their hands dirty, dispensing a proud yet disillusioned haughtiness, dramatically trapped in a reality where morality is held up to public mockery.

A malaise that finds its ultimate sublimation in "One Way Night", one of the most heart-wrenching ballads ever put to tape. The recipe here is simple: a fine grand piano, strings held taut but never intrusive, and one of those pop melodies - built entirely on minor and diminished chords - that, in its anguished chromatic descent, pierces the heart and brings on tears with sophisticated nonchalance. And this time even Godwin, that devilish, clean-faced seducer, seems almost moved as he watches the prey caught in his web, and so he begs her to run, not to give herself to him, that maybe she's "not ready for this kind of love" (as if that ever mattered...).

"One Way Night" is perhaps the emotional peak of a legendary record. The spell, already sorely tested by general indifference, doesn't last long, though. Once the partnership with Godwin ended, Browne went on with a solo career, writing music for major television networks, until his tragic death from cancer in 1993. Godwin and Lyons retained ownership of the Metro name, under which two more albums were released - "New Love" (1979) and "Future Imperfect" (1980) - both fairly dreadful.

And yet not even the feebleness of those two sequels managed to dim the brilliance of the debut, with its placid drifting outside any temporal classification, precariously balanced on a stylistic precipice that, at the height of the punk era, was perceived as self-celebratory formalism (which, in this case, couldn't be further from the truth).

"And that's it for homework today", think the students of the unlikely "School of Rock", the magical notes of "Metro" still dancing in their heads. So it would seem, at least until the diligent little teacher, in a full-blown glam-progressive fit (?), asks them who the Tubes are... Then, I fear, it'll all have to start over. And it'll be quite a laugh.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

04/06/2008