It’s not exactly a secret, but Joe Mount – here representing Metronomy as a solo, multi-instrumentalist – started out musically as an oddball’s oddball.
This whimsical, Pan-like British eccentricity gave way to the relatively mainstream on 2012’s ‘The English Riviera‘, a love letter to the Devon home of his adolescence on which he finally delivered songs to go with his many ideas. If its follow up, ‘Love Letters‘, seemed like a continuation, Mount has now apparently returned to his roots, claiming a little mysteriously that, “I had those other albums – and how I wanted to record in bigger studios – out of my system”.
His vision, accordingly, for ‘Summer 08‘ was one based around an axis of metropolitan clubbing, one where hedonism and vogue met to deliver a more upfront experience than the Metronomy construct had ever given the public before. The finished article however will perplex fans both of the group’s more recent vintage and those clinging on to Mount’s earlier boffinery, never quite instilling the losing-it-at-3am vibe on the listener but still more refined and less weird than his founding works of more than a decade ago.
Opener ‘Back Together‘ sets a tone in which things only fitfully hit the spot, a pseudo-duet with Mount as both parties, played out over a chugging post punk throb which speaks volumes for his studio proficiency but finds him struggling to locate a tune. Unperturbed, it’s much the same story on the very twisted disco of ‘Miami Logic‘ and the lugubrious Bowie-ism’s of ‘Mick Slow‘, the singer’s falsetto jarring against sinuous bass, atonal synths and some lightweight drum programming.
The idiosyncratic candour here – and the throwaway instrumental closer ‘Summer Jam‘ – along with Mount saying that ‘Summer 08’ won’t be toured to enable him to spend time with his family – make it hard to escape the conclusion that this is something of a spontaneous release. It’s equally true to say another word for it, in terms of feel, might be ‘stopgap’, a perhaps inevitable byproduct of working alone without the voluntary processes of editing which working with other musicians would surely bring.
This out in the open, there are moments when songs threaten to take off and fit the profile, notably on the Errol Alkan produced collaboration with Robyn, ‘Hang Me Out To Dry‘, or the crisply textured art-funk of ‘My House‘. Only via the cowbell ringing and faux-scratches of ‘Old Skool‘ is rip truly let however, the multi-variant creator nailing a groove which smudges Euro bonkers together with contemporary bangers, in the process hands down winning the previously underwhelmed night owls over to the dark side.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder they say. Perhaps too long away from his Bohemian past, Joe Mount has fallen back on it to produce – in every sense – an album which is engaged in something of a game of hide and seek with its listeners.
Whilst wanting to take them to a different place is to be applauded, ‘Summer 08’ needed to abandon itself more to the random or be a slave to the rhythm, both opportunities for completeness it never quite manages to take.