Love Letters

Love Letters proves to have all the pop addictivenss that Riviera did.

Instead of dynamism there is a defiantly "demos" feel to tracks that makes for a charming, fat-free album. [Apr 2014, p.96]

Mount's intoxicating amalgam of past and present is the real thing. [Apr 2014, p.114]

This contrarian impulse ultimately makes things more interesting, but Mount's decision to record at Toe Rag--the all-analogue Hackney studio made famous by The White Stripes and Billy Childish--imbues the songs with an archaic, lived-in feel that takes some getting used to, and you'd be forgiven for being underwhelmed by your first listen. Bear with it, however, and that feeling will turn to pleasant surprise.

Confessional and insular, Love Letters is the work of a band willing to take pop success on their own terms and reveal a different--but just as appealing--side of their artistry in the process.

The sonic thinness which seems inherent to Mount remains his limiting weakness, and modest strength.

Love Letters isn't the next move many expected from Metronomy following the astute pop of English Riviera, but it's a logical move and likely the best one possible for a band as imaginative, unconventional and talented as this one.

Metronomy have stepped up from the mantle of electro-pop, and matured into the sort of band that endures. Excitingly still, they leave us with no idea where they’ll go next.

What was once an instrumental electronic project has now, in the hands of Joseph Mount, become an inventive, layered, modern pop act, perfectly capable of standing on its own and defending its place among the genre’s very best.

Its lack of slickness and idiosyncrasies are where its charm lies.

The radical variation on this album speaks volumes--this casting respect to yesteryear twisted with the juices of his modern imagination--and if ‘The English Riviera’ was Mount at his most accessible, then Love Letters finds him at his most inventive.

Love Letters is great. There’s potential here, and it feels like it had the ability to be a nigh-on perfect record, but for reasons obscured--probably the brick-subtle lo-fi-ness--it feels unfinished. It’s like a final draft.

If The English Riviera was a lovingly weaved ode to a vibrant utopia, Love Letters, its predecessor and Metronomy's fourth full-length offering, is a return to the same shores, but under much darker skies.

Love Letters may not guarantee that Metronomy are the kings of their sound, but they still have a seat at the table.

Despite the growth it signifies for Mount, and the candor with which he delivers it, Love Letters is so lightly sketched that it never fully engages on a gut level.

The rest can't quite match this opening brace ["The Upsetter"], but there are gems throughout. [Apr 2014, p.75]

Love Letters is more mature, doleful and disconnected from club trends.

Love Letters [is] not quite a glorious failure, but more of an intermittently-glorious muddle.

There’s a nagging feeling that those derivative misses aren't so much accidental misfires as born out of a writer keen to remain free of the pressures of success. That prevents a promising record from being as good as it had the potential to be.

Mostly miserable on their perpetual holiday, Metronomy at least manage to let some sunshine in.

The bulk of Love Letters, though, backs off from the glittering mainstream superhighway on to a road less travelled.

It is perhaps testament to his [Joe Mount's] unwitting dedication to being coy and British that Love Letters is the quartet's most indie and foppish-sounding album yet.

If only the rest of the record caught on to that out-front force--the words on Love Letters might scan as more than lonely fridge-magnet poetry, the beats might feel like more than just placeholders, and the music could be something to dance to instead of just drift off to.

Like a vivid dream melting away in the first few minutes of morning, Love Letters has an uncanny beauty, but one that remains firmly out of reach.