Metronomy - Nights Out (Because)

With his new band mates, he's made an invigorating listen. Nights Out is quite brief as a long player, but gets through a lot in its forty or so minutes, confirming Mount as a writer who's listened to a lot of electronica in his time, not to mention a healthy dose of synth pop.

While the record confirms the outfit as a fully-fledged trio, the vocal numbers bring Mount forward as a decent front man with the necessary charisma, and enough variety in his voice to bring decidedly varied results. Singles My Heart Rate Rapid and Heartbreaker are especially good, the former using falsetto as it veers off in all manner of melodic and harmonic directions, while the latter drops anchor in the 1980s for a piece of pure pop, shot through with melancholy.

Double meaning works well, too - you might expect on the face of it a song called Holiday would be breezy, carefree and full of sunny harmonies. In practice that proves quite different, and Mount sings a barbed, deadpan song promising anything but a relaxing getaway.

The album also shows how Mount can write in a variety of structures, with some material sounding almost improvised. Just a minute of the intro will be enough to confirm this is not a man who thinks inside given confines, as what sounds like a wonky cassette tape winds into life. The End Of You Too, meanwhile, is a track throwing some intriguing shapes, colour combinations and styles. It crucially all sounds live, so even if it has been cobbled together on a computer, the presence of live musicians has given Metronomy's music an essentially human element, making it more vulnerable as a result.

Despite the influences taken on board this is intriguing and original music, and for Metronomy represents a real step forward. As long as they're encouraged not to rein in the experimental tendencies, they and Mount should become a force to be reckoned with.

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