Touring an album that wasn’t made to be toured is an interesting prospect; METRONOMY announced a tiny three night tour last year to promote the release of Summer ’08.
Having seen them live a plethora of times over the years, I must admit there’s very few bands that make me excited to go out on a Tuesday night after a full day of work.
At this stage, shockingly, I even manage to catch the support act, Bossy Love, who I must admit are absolutely brilliant live and seem to have a collection of absolutely brilliant tracks.
Even more shockingly, losing some cool points here, they’ve been around for a while; definitely check them out, they’re magic live.
METRONOMY start off their set with ‘Back Together’, which sounds immense live; I mean they’re a wee bit loose with some parts of the song – Joe Mount smashing the drums out of any rhythm for example, but in all honesty I’m pretty sure only syncopation Nazi’s care at this point; they generally just sound and look like they’re having fun.
METRONOMY have this thing that only truly great bands possess, they take new takes on songs, including songs never played live before, and make them sound unique; the songs from Summer ’08 certainly strike new despite having listened to them countless times.
There’s the inevitable huge cheers for ‘The Bay’ from the Glasgow crowd, but a few songs later ‘My Heart Rate Rapid’ brings surely the set highlight for long term fans, they’ve not played it in five years live and it’s played here with a gusto and imagination that’s beyond most mere mortals comprehension (massively exaggerating here but trust me, it was phenomenal).
‘Lately’ is debuted tonight and is fitting with the general synopsis of the set, while ‘Love Song For Dog’ gets an airing and is predictably re-imagined in a way no one could predict.
At this stage in the concert I draw massive comparisons to Stop Making Sense, this band have fun playing funky off beat songs that resonate with an audience, not as large as they should have.
The encore whizzes in and Mount is on drums now having “Binned Anna”, he’s joking as Anna Prior takes full stage for ‘Everything Goes My Way’.
And just like that it’s over, a breathless, surprisingly frantic and unpredictable performance; it’s the reason I rate them so highly, having seen them live so many times over the years, it’d be easy to grow apathetic, but with METRONOMY that’s really hard, they’re easily the most interesting live band I’ve seen in the past few years.
Words: Andrew Melrose
Photos: Ang Canavan
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