Live It Out

“Sha la la la la,” Emily Haines ends <i>Live It Out</i>’s title track, punctuating the last syllable with a tired, disgusted sneer. Both enjoying and challenging the fun and beauty the four-piece conjures with its splintery New Wave-isms, Haines carries forward the Mekons’ dictum: “Destroy your safe and happy lives before it is too late.” Unwilling to settle for any easy answer, including her own, she kicks against the world even as she sighingly acknowledges that the gesture might be futile (“I fought the war, but the war won,” she sings on “Monster Hospital”). Nonetheless, Metric delights in, well, delight, when they can find it. “Sure for the first time you’re wearing the right clothes,” Haines murmurs seconds before the guitars start to build on “Too Little Too Late.” “Now take them off.” Questioning everything but refusing to exist only in her buzzing head, she and her fellows in Metric have made one of the most rewarding rock albums in quite some time.