Love Letters

Metronomy have never been a band to be pinned down by one particular musical style. Having to follow an album as well-regarded  The English Riviera, there was always going to be some tentativeness around such a radical departure from the sound that made Joseph Mount and co. famous. Ditching the 80s synth pop for a more psych-rock/soul based sound, Love Letters represents a bold attempt from Metronomy to avoid being pigeonholed while still providing an intriguing listen. What emerges is a far more introspective and insular album than The English Riviera; a regret-tinged look back at lost loves that is unfortunately hampered by a lack of clear direction.

The album certainly opens strongly. ‘The Upsetter’’s soft acoustic guitar and Mount’s faltering falsetto underlie a scorned lover reliving the past – “Stuck in 1992 here…playing ‘I Will Always Love You’, yeah.” Single ‘I’m Aquarius’ follows a similar path, with Mount lamenting “You said our love was written in the stars / But I never paid attention to my charts.” It’s easily the album’s strongest effort; the mellow keyboards, crisp drum machine and chilled-out vibe are accompanied by the ‘shoop-doop-doop-ah’ backing vocals to create a track that encapsulates all the subtle coolness of songs like ‘The Look’ or ‘The Bay’, while holding true to the new sound on display in Love Letters.

The album continues on an almost hushed and low key tone, but the following tracks seem to lose something in comparison with excellent production of the initial two. The various influences are impressive in their breadth, but take away from the general direction of the album and make it come across more of a collection of jumbled ideas spilling from Mount than a tight, cohesive concept. ‘Monstrous’ touches on elements of psychedelic and krautrock, ‘Month of Sundays’ and ‘The Most Immaculate Haircut’ take on a more traditional indie bent, with jangly guitars, but give Mount no more happiness than the brooding disco pulses of ‘Boy Racers’.

Ditching the 80s synth pop for a more psych-rock/soul based sound, Love Letters represents a bold attempt from Metronomy to avoid being pigeonholed while still providing an intriguing listen.

In amongst all this, the triumphant Motown trumpets of the title track, ‘Love Letters’, almost feel out of place, as the brass and funky bass lines clash against the more subdued synth work of the rest of the album. There’s some recovery at the tail end of the album; the single finger organ solos of ‘Reservoir’ wouldn’t feel out of place on ‘The English Riviera’ and the album comes to a close on the surprisingly powerful ‘Never Wanted’, which starts as a spaced-out funk meets psychedelic mix, before swelling into a brief effort at power balladry, with Mount wondering “Does it get better?”, but not really finding an answer.

The band’s choice to move away from their tried-and-true methods of success is certainly commendable, yet Love Letters struggles to find its feet. The rest of the album fails to match the strong stylistic choice that dominated the first two songs and leaves the bulk of the tracks either too dull and insular or feeling out of place. When the album works, however, there are flashes of brilliance that remind us of the Metronomy we are used to. Not quite the glorious failure it initially appears to be, we are left more with the impression of a failure to properly realise bold ideas; Love Letters leaves us with an intermittent muddle of occasional excellence, and some hope for the future.