Metronomy, Alexandra Palace

Cheery electro meets '60s pop at the Alexandra Palace Metronomy  gig, London 2014.

"I'm always writing love letters", assert Metronomy on the title track of their fourth album Love Letters . This cheery confession is ushered in by jabbing keyboards and the summer-of-love jangle of the saxophone and backing vocals.

It's typical of the British electro pop group, which formed in Devon in 1999. Metronomy are a group joyfully (and wilfully) in love with the past, where every child's education began not with a glass of milk, but a synthesizer.

But where 1980s synth pop was the thrust behind their glossy, Mercury nominated 2011 album The English Riviera, it’s 1960s pop sensibilities that characterize Love Letters. The title track is unadulterated Motown and we even have some ‘shoop-shoop’ scatting on I’m Aquarius, à la Rudy Clark circa 1963.

Production-wise, Love Letters is more intimate than The English Riviera : lower-key, a bit scuffed up, heart-on-sleeve. This candour is matched in Joseph Mount’s lyrics: pining for his long-distance lover, he opens the album with: "I've gotta beam my message to ya/ Straight from the satellite/'Cos, girl, we're meant to be together”. "I get this feeling in my bones sometimes/it's like my legs might fall away”, he laments on The Most Immaculate Haircut.

It's not all doom and gloom, though - if there's one thing Metronomy can do, it's get everyone dancing. Book Metronomy's Alexandra Palace gig for the chance to see a premier alternative pop act strutting their bygone stuff.