Metronomy – The English Riviera

Metronomy’s 2008 breakthrough album Nights Out is already starting to sound a little ‘of its time’. Lo-fi recording may have helped it escape the rubber stamp of nu-rave, but the incessant need to sabotage its inherent tunefulness did grate after a while. The English Riviera, however, finds the quartet in the studio for the first time and the overhaul is marked.

Frontman Joseph Mount now seems confident in letting the songwriting do the talking without piling on the sonic clutter to give things ‘edge’. Opening track We Broke Free is almost horizontal in its soulful, lounge delivery, whilst lead single The Look is so bright and clean you may want to check this is the same band that once dropped My Heart Rate Rapid. The English Riviera will likely be something of a game changer for Metronomy, a mature step forward without the dull earnestness that such transitions usually imply. [Darren Carle]