Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 08/09/08
Label: Because

It'd be very easy to dismiss Metronomy. To be honest, it'd probably be even easier to ignore them altogether. The first point of disinterest is the weedy name, which brings to mind images of ticking clocks, slavishly and mundanely marking regular intervals in time while the world goes on breathing between beats. Then there's the observation that Joseph Mount's dance-rock has drawn him uncomfortably close to the flabby bosom of nu-rave; a pyrrhic movement which, like the Libertines' urch-rock before it, really only blessed London with one band worth bothering with.

Then Klaxons' swift jettisoning of the term left everyone unfortunate enough to have been corralled into nu-rave stranded in ideological quicksand; neon-clad and walking home the morning after through hordes of stern-faced commuters. All of which makes you feel for Mount, for live band mates Gabriel Stebbing and Oscar Cash and for Metronomy. Poor Mount's not even from London - he hails from Totnes in Devon, a distant haven you'd like to imagine nu-rave never had the legs to reach.

More pertinently, his new record is a fine one, "Nights Out" picking up where 2006 debut "Pip Paine (Pay the £5000 You Owe)" left off; styles reeled in and stripped for parts which are reassembled, re-wired, into something oddly-cohesive - pick apart "Nights Out" to find the ligature and you'll want to hunt down the synapse in your brain that made the nu-rave connection and tear the blaggard out. There's a poise to Metronomy, something that's only ever inborn or immaculately-studied.

Here, the latter's most likely - check "Holiday", with its searching Vangelis synth sounds and "Blue Monday" drumming or the guitar-bass knit borrowed from Bowie's production on "Ziggy Stardust" and "Transformer" for "Side 2". In fact, after a few listens every song on "Nights Out" rises to meet early stand-outs "Radio Ladio" and "On Dancefloors", Mount capably persuading his influences to moon and strut beneath Metronomy's banner.

It's an odd electro - propulsive and lean enough for the dancefloor, but with enough 'pop' meat to feed radio, neat but heartfelt sounds you imagine The Rakes making had they graduated from one of those aforementioned London scenes to the other. Finally, you're drawn back to the name and all that steady, unwavering rhythm has given us - how it's the sole link between Klaus Dinger's crystalline motorik drive and the charging gait of The Ramones. 'Metronomy'. As "Nights Outro" trundles to an absurd close, pouring itself a glass of water and heading to bed, that name and a little order don't seem too bad. Not bad at all.

    by Kev Kharas