Review: Metronomy

Posted by RHT_Stephen on March 6, 2014 in Music | Leave a comment

After a 3 year hiatus, Electro-pop group Metronomy are back with their latest studio album Love Letters.

Its been 3 years since Metronomy released new material, with their 2011 album The English Riviera reaching 28th in the UK album charts, helped in part by their particularly catchy tune The Look, sadly however at the time the electro-pop scene wasn’t as strong as today and sadly meant that in my opinion ended up being at least 28 places lower than it deserved to be, thought despite their lowly chart position, this Devonshire foursome did manage a Mercury Prize nomination and became somewhat the darlings of the blossoming UK indie-elctro scene, so I just had to give their album a listen ahead of its general release on the 10th of this month.

While The English Riviera was a an ode to the sea side, Love Letters takes a different direction, reverting back to a lo-fi approach, starting off with the simple yet beautiful The Upsetter, with is’s retro acoustic feel, it’s a surprise to what I was expecting. but suits the subject matter, which this time is darker, featuring long distance relationships, felling out of love and lust, using beautifully scored harmonies and minimalist beats that maximise the emotion and make you pay attention to the lyrics better than some of their previous albums, though their new stuff still contains links to their previous work, such as in the title song Love Letters and I’m Aquarius both contain the fun and eccentric elements that made the band a crowd favourite when I saw them at Rockness back in 2012.

Love Letter feels as the band have spent the last three years growing as musicians,  returning with stories from their own lives, producing an album that they hope will push them on to further chart success, just in time for festival season, it’s my feeling that we will be seeing them all over the festival scene this summer, with Field Day already confirmed and a UK tour all through March to help promote the release of the album, followed by a European tour through April, expect to hear a fair bit about Metronomy in the run up to summer.

Tour

March

12th – Olympia Theatre, Dublin

13th – Academy, Liverpool

14th – The Ritz, Manchester

17th – Rock City, Manchester

18th – Academy, Leeds

19th – ABC, Glasgow

20th – Academy, Newcastle

21st – HMV Institute

23rd – Pyramids Centre, Portsmouth

24th – Academy, Bristol

25th – Academy, Oxford

26th – UEA, Norwich

28th – Brixton Academy, London

If you like: Hot Chip, Foals, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs.

 Love Letters is released on the 10th of March, for more information on Metronomy, follow them via Facebook, Twitter or their Website.