Colour Factory, LondonThe band’s forthcoming seventh album could be heading for the middle of the road, but this show was an ebullient mix of crowdpleasers and breezy new material
Showcasing a new album months before its release is a tricky endeavour. Especially if that album edges your band’s hyperactive sound – one that had previously skipped playfully from electro-pop to yacht rock to Motown-tinged psych – dangerously towards MOR maturity. But that’s the challenge facing Metronomy’s frontman Joe Mount as he straps on an acoustic guitar at the start of this comeback gig as part of the inaugural
London festival from Pitchfork. Looking slightly worried, the band – keyboardist Oscar Cash, bassist Olugbenga, drummer Anna Prior and Michael Lovett on guitar – tiptoe into the breezy Love Factory, a swaying singalong-in-waiting from next February’s pared down seventh album, Small World.
It’s swiftly followed by a handful of crowdpleasers, however, with the elasticated Everything Goes My Way rubbing shoulders with a beefed-up Night Owl, the latter a showcase not only for Olugbenga’s undulating bass riffs but a megawatt perma-grin that powers most of the set. After The Reservoir’s bouncy keyboard riff leads to a crowd singalong, Mount seems to settle, his endearingly awkward between-song patter covering east London gentrification (he’s a fan of Hackney’s nearby “big Boots”) and the climate crisis (London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone gets a shoutout).