Sunday 9 September 2012

The 2kDozen 500: #305 - Metronomy, "Late Night Tales"

Late Night Tales keeps on fucking trucking, eh? And while I wait for Metronomy to pull their fingers out and put together another album, this will have to do.


"Seabird" has that brittle soulful quality of Hot Chip, which you can hear in the Metronomy DNA. Even the Autechre track they go for is pretty smooth ("Fold4,Wrap5"), none of the usual dysmorphic mechanics. Geneva Jacuzzi's "Love Caboose" is a weird, wobbly slice of disco while Two Lone Swordsman's "You Are..." klings and klangs like the best krautrock electronica. And I can no longer say that I've never heard Tonto's Expanding Headband. So there's that. It was more electronic than I expected.

I tell you what is good listening as well. "The Day (We Fell In Love)" by Appaloosa. All parlour piano and bored sounding female vocals and sleek pulse. I sense a bit of Metronomy DNA there too. And I like the cajun pop number by Katie and Anna McGarrigle as well. And the Herman Dune drifts off just the way cloudy experimental pop ought. Just when you think it couldn't get any more tremulous - along comes Cat Power with "Werewolf". Her and her breathy mumbles. End of the campfire stuff. Before Paul Morley's unbedtime Rimbaud biographical poetry does the end.

Rating: Brittle Soul out of Smooth Mechanics

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