Metro Station
Metro Station
Red Ink Records
By Joey Coombe
It’s an L.A. story, but one you haven’t heard yet. Introduced by their mothers, teenage members of Metro Station turned their play date from MySpace popularity to major label interest. What can be described as a whirlwind success story often appears less apparent in the age of the Internet, but this is the world Metro Station lives in. After three months on MySpace, the band signed a record deal with Red Ink. They’re too young to be aware that things used to be done differently. MySpace hasn’t replaced the proverbial bus stop rock bands used to wait at in order to be discovered; it has replaced waiting. It is almost as if Metro Station has inverted the successful rock band scenario, major label contract first, playing small L.A. rock venues second.
By replacing the waiting around to be discovered, it makes me wonder what it means for Metro Station to be young. How does Metro Station communicate the teenage experience if it’s not about waiting to be an adult? The first song on their self-titled album, “Seventeen Forever,” includes the lyrics, “You won’t be seventeen forever and we can get away with this tonight.” Aware of youth’s fleeting moments, Metro Station prioritizes its recklessness as if it were an excuse to indulge in indiscretion. “Control,” on the other hand, collapses conflict without creating contradiction in the line “I feel just like we’re taking control / I feel like we’re losing control.” For Metro Station they are the same moment. Being able to lose control is an autonomous act in and of itself.
Metro Station is different from the albums that define my teenage experience. The Violent Femmes debut album for instance deals largely with wanting things to happen but not sure how to go about it. But Metro Station is a much different band than the Violent Femmes. They have a sound that is slicker. Taking cues from both emo and dance-pop, refreshingly, Metro Station sound unlike anything recently labeled as indie. If All-American Rejects completely separated themselves from their punk roots and cited the Jock Jams compilations as a major influence, then you would have something closer to the sound of Metro Station. As far as Metro Station communicating my teenage experience, I’m not sure what the band could want to happen that they haven’t already made happen. This may be the part of Metro Station’s story that is distinctly Los Angeles or it could be they are just ambitious, but not knowing how to make things happen is not an issue. The Internet is a technology of possibility and Metro Station (like a lot of kids who grew up with it) is just savvier.
There’s a metro station at Hollywood and Highland where subway trains run every 10 minutes. Below ground it’s difficult to get cellphone reception. I’m curious to know how the band members would spend that time. How often would they check their watch? Do kids even wear watches anymore? If times have indeed changed and youth does not feel so much like waiting and much more like the passing of a moment, then Metro Station have captured that on their debut album. Still, when I think back, seventeen did feel like forever.
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