In this week’s New Music Report, Rolling Stone’s Kevin O’Donnell takes a look at Metric’s new album Fantasies, and the band provides some insight into the writing of single “Gimme Sympathy” in a video interview. Metric’s Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw recently popped in the RS offices to perform acoustic versions of tracks off Fantasies, the quartet’s first album in four years. In Rolling Stone’s three-and-a-half star review of the LP, contributing editor Christian Hoard writes, “Emily Haines delivers big refrains and spiky hooks, cooing about love on ‘Sick Muse’ and going dark on ‘Help I’m Alive,’ a throbbing, Garbage-esque single that’s bound to be played in any number of dingy indie-rock bars.”

Also in the New Music Report: the new album by Doves, Kingdom of Rust. O’Donnell writes in his three-star review, “For their fourth record in nine years, Doves deliver gorgeous, sonically adventurous tunes dappled with strings, droning guitars, Radiohead-ish atmospherics and singer Jimi Goodwin’s longing tales of lonely train rides and missing the sunshine.”

For more on the new one by the Doves and the tale of how a Metric song almost turned Emily Haines into Shania Twain, check out our New Music Report above.

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