Song of the Day: METZ – Cellophane

Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Today’s song, featured on The Midday Show with Cheryl Waters, is “Cellophane” by METZ from their album Strange Peace, available now via Sub Pop Records.

METZ – Cellophane (MP3)

If METZ and Steve Albini hadn't finally teamed up for the Toronto punk trio's third album Strange Peace, we probably would have had to have had some kind of national conversation about why these two aesthetic soulmates hadn't worked together yet. METZ's first two self-produced albums documented the growing up process of an unruly outfit that had clearly spent some time with the frayed, livewire recordings that the famed producer (or, "engineer," to use Albini's preferred moniker) had made with Nirvana, the Jesus Lizard, and PJ Harvey. On Strange Peace, which was recorded live on the floor in four days, Albini makes drummer Hayden Menzies sound like a piston and sharpens frontman Alex Edkins' guitars until they draw blood.

On "Cellophane," METZ rumble along, destroying everything in their path via a surprisingly surf-rock flecked groove, but beneath the instrumental might lurks a heart of uncertainty, as Edkins tears his lungs out hoping to get a sense of where he stands in a relationship: "Where do we go from here/How will I know it's real/How will I know?"

KEXP presents METZ on Thursday, December 7th at Neumos. 'Til then, check out a video for today's featured track below. Director Shayne Ehman describes it as a sphere where "consciousness is split, and a world of contrast unfolds. The resulting disembodiment disperses one’s spatial awareness and new kinds of empathy develop. Two become three, and it’s only half the story."