Neon on Skin, Needle Down: A Love Letter To Metric's 'Fantasies'

A love letter written in reverb, needle down, eyeliner smudged, heart wide open.

This one is special. Not in a way that some records are special because they topped the charts or defined a genre, or were name-dropped by your childhood crush as “life-changing.” No, this one is different. It’s not just the soundtrack to a time in your life — it is the time in your life. Woven into your skin, your stories, your nights. It didn’t just play in the background. It became the moment.

I don’t remember just listening to Fantasies. I remember the glow of neon on skin, the mirror ball bunnies running up my legs. The flash of my camera catching limbs mid-dance. Teeth on straws, tongues visiting other people’s mouths. Sweaty boys in band tees, girls in glitter and vintage boots, fake horn-rimmed glasses, grandpa-style cardigans with pockets full of cigarettes. All these kids piling into indie sleaze staple night called Purple Sneakers at the Abercrombie Hotel in Sydney, like it was a special kind of cult and youth was holy.

Metric Fantasies

At that time of my life, I was photographing live music and party people all over Sydney. Chasing lights, smoke, and also moments that didn’t know they were being captured. It was normal for me to be coming home at 4 a.m. with my legs bruised and my lens sticky from someone’s rum and coke or from those tiny teapots they served Long Island Iced Tea in Kings Cross. Metric’s Fantasies was quite often spinning in my ears as I downloaded the night onto my laptop — face flushed, chest full.

This album lived with me. In my bones, in my camera strap. In the way I walked. In my studded Jeffrey Campbell boots.

Fantasies isn’t just a record, it’s a neon-lit coming of age. It’s the thrill of being exactly who you are and the devastation of realising that might not be enough for someone else.

It’s sharp, charged, and endlessly replayable — like the memory of the person who first made you feel alive in your own skin. The one who never called you back, but whose taste in music made you forgive everything.

‘Help I’m Alive’ is a pulse-turned percussion, perfect opener. All of us girls had that one moment alone in the club bathroom, lipstick smeared, mind racing. Emily Haines whispering: "My heart keeps beating like a hammer...”

You feel it in your wrists. You feel it in your teeth. It hits you like electricity and there is no going back.

‘Sick Muse’ is a strut. A kiss-off. It made me feel invincible. Like I could kiss whoever I wanted, walk away and still have the upper hand. The guitars are still sharp enough to slice through shame.

‘Gimme Sympathy’ was for walking home barefoot. Heels in hand. Air heavy with fog and morning smells and some boy’s compliments I only half believed. Nowadays, I prefer to dance to it in the kitchen, but I still fall in love with the question: “Who’d you rather be? The Beatles or The Rolling Stones?” and my answer changes every single time.

And ‘Satellite Mind’? It broadcasts. A private frequency sent out like a dare: low, rhythmic, shimmering with threat and tenderness. “I’m not suicidal, I just can’t get out of bed.” That line landed in me like a match strike, it still lands. Too honest to be dramatic. Too real to be ignored. This song understands the ache of overstimulation. The yearning to disconnect while still needing to be seen. The paradox of being so in tune with someone you wish you could block from your bloodstream. “I send it out, a frequency of you.” Isn’t that what we all do? Think someone into the room. Project them into songs, streetlights, cigarette smoke. Hoping they’ll pick up the signal. I still do this and sometimes I think it still works.

‘Front Row’ is still one of my favourites. One of the most slept-on, but fiercely iconic tracks off the album. It’s such an attitude. I wish I could just have this song on my own life’s soundtrack. It feels like every time you showed up looking too good for someone who didn’t deserve to see you at all. “Burnout stars they shine so bright.” This song is about reclaiming the narrative.

It’s about realising that someone only ever put you in the audience because they knew you could’ve taken the stage. Because “burnout stars” — they don’t vanish. They just live on their own frequencies. And I still keep tuning in. Just in case he’s still out there, thinking of me, the way I still — unreasonably — think of him.

By the time ‘Stadium Love’ comes around, you think you’ve figured the album out. You haven’t. Because it’s not really a conclusion, is it?

‘Stadium Love’ is teeth and glitter and fire escape sex energy. It’s the last dance before the lights explode and animals tearing each other apart while synths scream in the background: “spider vs. bat, tiger vs. rat.” The whole song sounds like a fight that you didn’t want to start, but won’t back out of either. It’s chaos, but polished. Mayhem, but draped in leather. It’s the band letting go of everything they held back — until now.

And yet — it’s controlled. That’s what Metric did on this record. They built a cage and set the fire inside. No one gets out alive. For me, ‘Stadium Love’ always played at the end of something. End of the night, the relationship. End of pretending I was okay with shrinking. This song gave me permission to be loud again. To feel alive. To go feral in my own skin. To want more and to bite back. It reminds me that not every war can be won, but you can still make the ending epic and cinematic whether you win or lose.

The album is fast and fearless and feminine in all the right ways, that the world doesn’t always know how to handle. Emily Haines doesn’t just sing. She commands an army. She writes like someone who’s been shattered and built herself back with 80s music hooks and sarcasm and glitter glued to her knuckles.

And on vinyl? Fantasies breathes differently. The needle warms it. The crackle makes it intimate. It’s like the songs are slipping their coat off at your door. Staying the night.

This album held it all. The late nights, the camera flashes, the quiet mornings. The basslines that felt like flirting. The lyrics that knew the ache before I did.

I don’t miss the chaos, but I do miss the possibility.

And I think that’s what Fantasies did best — it caught me mid-transformation. Between heartbreak and glory. Between chaos and clarity. Between the person I wanted to be and the one I already was.

So here’s to that record. To the one that turned up the volume when I was afraid to speak. To Emily. To distortion and defiance. To the beat that still lives under my skin.

Help, I’m alive.

Still.