After catching the project/trio (delete as you see fit) live for the third time recently in a Chigwell forest at Offset Festival, their reputation as the most exciting act of 2008 was set in stone. Their little-known first album, Pip Paine (Pay Back The £5000 You Owe), recorded just before the masses began to catch onto their fervour, offered a brilliant introduction to the only electro-trio ever known to combine twee with frantic – and now that everyone knows about Metronomy, the opportunity’s staring at Joseph Mount et al like a gold nugget in the eyeball. This not-really-sophomore album opens startlingly, like a relentless kickboxing assault to the head. Making it impossible to sit still, the vocal-free first few tracks are so cleverly layered and developed it’s simply astonishing. ‘The End Of You Too’ sets your ears up for the way that Metronomy aspire towards a modern-day fugue. It’s like Devo gone electro, and we find ourselves constantly struggling to keep up.
‘On The Motorway’ reminds us of Ratatat’s more pondering output, with some lovely almost contrapuntal synth-work going down underground. And single ‘Heartbreaker’, stark on its own terms, easily fades into the background on Nights Out – because there’s no weak track, neither do all come across as immediate singles. ‘Side 2’ isn’t a floor-filler in the same way as ‘Back On The Motorway, but it easily creates as much stir.
Old favourite (it’s all relative) ‘Radio Ladio’ is forthright in its approach, dizzily spiralling towards a desperado of a chorus – and followed by the concentrically-vocalled ‘My Heart Rate Rapid’, the falsetto packs a solid one-two, baffling and entrancing in equal part with some mega-abstract lyricism. Never hanging around to ponder, it’s the sheer directness of the parts that give this album its immediate appeal. There’s little in the way of obviously similar artists either, something so rare in the current trend for ‘Westlife-by-numbers (with guitars)’ bands. We can only really think of Kitsune and Four Tet, but that’d just be to fill in the blanks.
It’s crazy that a track as unique as ‘Holiday’ can almost slip by unnoticed, but with offerings as phenomenal as ‘A Thing For Me’, any sense of normality is given short sharp thrift instantly. The a cappella opening is magnetic, quickly building into a frenetically wheezy jingle-jangle; the spangly falsetto of the chorus set after the functional deadpan of the verses is immediately puzzling, and a few listens later, a dichotomous delight. The contrasts are looped into an austere whirl until the all-out choruses come into being, making this a real eye-catcher of a track.
‘On Dancefloors’ is the one that takes the most listens to get into – and that’s because of its comparative weightiness. There’re more lines to take in, and the track takes longer to take off than its compatriots, maybe because of the sense of (earnest) post-robotic discontent:
“All those evenings, spent disappointed on dancefloors… I want to get more from this”. If the rest of the album is an all-night aural assault, then this must be the come down. And it makes sense in the album’s sense of completion in linking the opening
‘Nights Intro’ with the closing ‘Nights Outro’, as well as the recurrent motif of affairs of the heart in ‘Heartbreaker’ and ‘My Heart Rate Rapid’. Ad then there’s the sense of getaway in ‘Holiday’ and ‘On The Motorway’; on a scale of how thought out
Nights Out is, the score awarded sits somewhere between ‘
nonchalant’ and ‘
pedantic’. Â
We’ve got a massive soft spot for the band live – and whilst this album never lets up, it can never come close to showing just how well the ‘indie electro disco’ thing works in the live arena. If Metronomy turns out to be the beginning of a new epoch in the way it deserves to be then the world should welcome it with arms wide open; those who fail to succumb to the charm of Nights Out should reassess their take on life. Every single one of these tracks seem to capitulate way too quickly and it’s surprising to see that most of them span longer than three and a half minutes – but doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?
Quite simply, the highlights of the last four week’s album releases. It’s been a spectacular month, with two of these albums in our top five of the year so far – that’d be TV On The Radio and Metronomy, if you’re trying to read our minds. So in no particular order, here’s our favourites from the quartet of weeks gone by.
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