Matt Fink, exclusive to SoundOrbit.com

Kid Metropolis
A Sound to Fill a City

CD Release all info on SoundOrbit.com

Though the name Kid Metropolis may conjure images of a city hardened DJ with a turntable and drum machine, the moniker actually belongs to a Montreal quartet that seems to have far grander ambitions that making people bump on a dance floor. These songs are designed to fill stadiums.

From the buzzing keyboard notes that open the unusually titled “Dear Bob Costas, Elvis Lives,” the band builds a somber backdrop for a song that winds through multiple passages of pulsing guitar lines pushing ever upward, bubbling bass lines, and soaring vocals. The soft atmosphere and glossy textures carry a troubled chorus that bends and weaves and doubles back on itself, rising and falling with the swirling drums and the commanding but somber performances of vocalist Bayan Foyle.

That subtle theatricality colors the quivering piano balladry of “When I Felt the Bullet Enter My Heart,” where Foyle struggles to reassure himself over oohing and ahhing backing vocals and a thoughtfully probing piano line. Here, Foyle’s ability to invest a genuine human vulnerability into his lyrics make potentially self-serious lines such as “For just a moment let me imagine what it might feel like to be OK” more sincere than melodramatic. To counter that power balladry, the band sinks deep in the snarling guitar lines and space rock synths of “Self Portrait,” a tougher, more edgy track where Bayan goes from Thom Yorke-ish falsetto coos to sky splitting screams over the course of three minutes.

The space tunnel whoosh, handclaps, and churning guitars of “Are You With Me or Against Me?” make for their finest moment, however. Full of mewing synths, triumphantly galloping piano lines, and a tambourine-shaking chorus that manages to be both conflicted and celebratory at the same time, it’s the song that comes closest to laying out a blueprint for a band that is figuring out what patch of atmosphere they want to cultivate and make their own. It’s a sound that could fill stadiums, cities even.

Courtesy of SoundOrbit.com