Only up to the fifth album but every day it just gets a little bit harder to write these! I'm always going back and forth in my head about whether I made the right decisions and today, at this exact moment, I've actually changed my mind and opted for my initial number five choice...

My fifth favourite album is 2014 is Love Letters by Metronomy. This was probably the hardest choice out of the seven because this was up against Sam Smith's brilliant debut - In The Lonely Hour. An equally awesome record but at the end of the day, the deciding question was, "which one did I actually come back to the most after first listen?" and Metronomy won out.

Love Letters is Metronomy's fourth album and it definitely has some of my favourite songs of theirs on it. I really overdid this album this year. So much so, that I actually saw it performed live three times (here, here and here) in the space of four months. Weirdly, I'm still not tired of it. It's just a very well crafted album! When I heard their first single from it "I'm Aquarius" I knew it'd be a catchy album but I didn't think it'd be this hard to shake. In fact, when I first heard the single, I wasn't actually sure whether I'd like the album at all - boy was I wrong! I actually think that it's their only album that I can listen to without feeling the need to skip a track. My current favourites are "Love Letters", "Reservoir", "Monstrous" and "Month Of Sundays", but they tend to change from time to time.

I think that this is a record I'll certainly be bringing back for years to come - as I will with all of the records that make/almost make this list! Metronomy have done well with this one. It's versatile and an incredibly enjoyable listen. Looking forward to the seeing how the next record matches up.

Last Saturday (21/03/2014) I went down to The Institute, Birmingham to see Metronomy. If I'm honest, I wasn't really expecting too much, of course I knew Metronomy would be good - I just went down hoping to be entertained I suppose. Let's just say I got what I hoped for and so much more.

Nobody really seemed to know who the support act would be and so when this band stepped on, after something like an hour long wait, and began tuning their instruments when the lights had already dimmed - I have to say I was a little bit confused. When they started playing, at first they sounded a little bit like Django Django so I was kind of hopefully excited, waiting for them to start playing something like "Hail Bop". However, when the female member of the band started singing, I knew that it wasn't Django Django. They later announced that they were called Virginia Wing. Throughout the set they had a couple of promising songs that I really got into, but besides that I wasn't feeling them too much - they were slightly underwhelming, and they definitely weren't able to prepare me for what I was about to witness next...

When the lights dimmed for a second time and Metronomy stepped on stage all suited and booted, a huge grin couldn't help but stretch across my face. They actually started slow, opening with "Monstrous" - one of my favourites from the new record. Then the show escalated, leaving the crowd with no time to even register half of the awesomeness that they were witnessing. I'm going to use this junction to highlight how much of a badass Benga is. He is easily one of the best performers I've seen in a long time, and not simply in regards to his musicianship. Benga puts on an entire show of his own, and looks ridiculously suave doing so - brilliant performer.

This show in general definitely made it more evident to me exactly how talented Metronomy actually are. Every single note was executed with precision. Some of the songs that I enjoyed most that night include "Love Letters", "Everything Goes My Way", "Holiday", "Corinne" and "I'm Aquarius" - and that's not even including the encore! Having three albums worth of great tracks to work into a setlist certainly stood them in good stead because by the end of the night they'd played, what seemed in my opinion, the perfect setlist. When they played "Heartbreaker" in the encore, it completely cemented this - the first song that I ever heard by them, and I felt just as good about it then as I did the first time I heard it. Top night!

Overall Rating - 8/10


Here are some pictures from the night...