Album Review: Metronomy Forever by Metronomy

One of the key elements behind the success of Metronomy's breakthrough album The English Riviera was Joseph Mount's ability to take a concept and stitch it together with a number of different musical threads. On Metronomy Forever, the band's sixth album, front man Mount looks to repeat the trick, recreating the feel of listening to a radio station for an hour. It is a brave idea in a world where attention spans have never been shorter, but through the same grasp of different musical styles and a natural rise and fall running through the record, Mount achieves his aim.

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First things first, it's called 'Metronomy Forever'. It's not a greatest hits compilation. But with the number of stone cold belters packed into this, the sixth album from one of the most innovative surviving groups of the noughties indie era, you'd be forgiven for thinking it were one. Clocking in at a hefty 55 minutes over 17 tracks, it's the most ambitious project from the group so far, but the interludes that slot between the longer tracks don't feel forced or intimidating - far from it.

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With their sixth album, Metronomy tap into the spirit of their 2008 classic 'Nights Out', this time toeing the line between maturity and playfulness Just over 10 years ago, Metronomy went on a bender. 'Nights Out', their breakthrough album and soundtrack to a generation of freshers, was proof that indie, pop and electronic music could exist outside the clatterings of nu-rave, with the wobbly 'Radio Ladio' and new-wave aping 'On Dancefloors' being as sticky, garish and loveable as the clubs we all stumbled in and out of. Frontman Joe Mount and the gang celebrated the 10th anniversary with a reissue earlier this year.

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The mammoth 17-track-long offering is a vibrant fruit salad of various tastes, colours and styles. Grungy Nirvana-esque guitars ("Insecurity", "Lately"), Tame Impala-nodding sonics ("Ur Mixtape", "Whitsand Bay") and Lipps Inc.-style '80s sugar-rush pop ("Salted Caramel Ice Cream") are just some of the influences apparent throughout. Tracks are also structurally diverse.

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Since the beginning, Metronomy's razor-sharp pop and quirky soundscapes have been as hard to pin down as they are unmistakable. On Metronomy Forever, the feeling that their music is whatever the band feels like doing at the moment is especially strong. That the group's sixth album feels like a diversion makes sense: Joseph Mount wrote these songs while working on Robyn's brilliant 2018 return Honey and recorded them after relocating from Paris to the English countryside.

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For this humble reviewer, it feels like just yesterday that Metronomy helped soundtrack the summer of 2011 with their dazzling third effort 'The English Riviera'. Similarly, it's been a full eleven since breakthrough 'Nights Out' grabbed the attention of scene kids up and down the country. These are facts that haven't escaped band leader Joseph Mount, who returned to the British countryside to craft a contemplative sixth full-length.

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When Metronomy Forever isn't beckoning you into your own personal dance party, it's laying out atmospheric jams appropriate for soundtracking a night in with your boo, a jaunt through the city or a wistful gaze out the window of a moving train.   Uncharacteristic of the lavish tendencies we've come to expect from Metronomy, their latest record dwindles into minimalism more than slightly, with atmospheric interludes outweighing the more dynamic tracks nearly two to one. But with three years in the making since Summer 08, the band have ….

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W hile Metronomy have spent their career hopping slickly from one genre to another, until now the shifts have come between albums, rather than within them. Whether the rudimentary bedroom electronica of 2006's Pip Paine (Pay the £5000 You Owe) or the Motown genuflections of 2014's Love Letters, each LP has had its own distinctive sound. Metronomy Forever, however, is a wilfully eclectic glide through seemingly disparate genres, often within the same song.

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