METRONOMY with The Mae Shi 1.21.09 | El Rey | Los Angeles, CA by Noah Barron Do you know what I love? Choreographed dance moves and battery-powered tap lights on dudes’ chests. I can’t be the only one, because Metronomy totally nailed it. There they were, in all black, standing before their keyboards and samples and drum machine stands, chest lights aglow like Iron Man’s arc reactor, ripping into their techno-electro-Prince-doo-wop-baile-whatever tracks. Can I get an Amen? Frontman Joseph Mount, interviewed on said lights: “I thought, ‘We’ll whack these on our shirts and do some synchronized light shows!’ I’m totally aware that some people hate it but equally I think some people enjoy it just for the fact that it’s a bit of fun.” Consider me emphatically in the latter, Joe.
Devon-based Metronomy cut their teeth as remixers extraordinaires, scrambling the likes of Lykke Li, Goldfrapp, Midnight Juggernauts and Sébastian Tellier, but now tour as a trio, sporting sax, sex, samples, guitars, robotic percussion, wacky poses and awkwardly fitting pants. They’re like the Junior Boys with more Red Bull or Justice with less. It’s totally a thing. Okay, so knock a few points off for not really playing that much (like 80 percent of Metronomy’s performance is loop cueing) and knock a few more off for gratuitous melodica use, but then add them all back on again for using said melodica to evoke a sort of Borat-meets-Cut Copy Balkan dance rock vibe. Can I get a WTF?
The lyrics are pat, laddish, playful: “I heard she broke your heart again,” (“Heartbreaker), the vocal delivery is one part Robert Smith, one part Mike Skinner and one part speed-Pikey “Snatch” gypsy brogue, shaken and definitely stirred. Sharp synth stabs and bumbling drum pulses keep the threesome moving in the general direction of the Rapture, but the fun, the balladry and the lack of a drummer keep them from being a real electro dance outfit. (Thank god.) Call it geekwave or Sega Motown. But call it sweet. Even the sexy M.I.A. look-alike chick and her silver-pants wearing kathoey friend were getting their boogie on. London, quieten down, the lads from Devon are making a sound. Great show, great tracks, definitely worth a listen if you haven’t experienced Metronomy’s recent album, “Nights Out,” the Dylan-goes-electric moment when the boys went vocal. Though they begged the audience to buy their record, Metronomy acknowledged that illegal downloading probably drove people to the show. “With the Internet, anything is possible,” joked Mount. So, beg, borrow or steal your way to a copy of this record. A few words on The Mae Shi, (who got me press tix to the show, so sorry guys, I'm about to spit venom): everybody's high school had this band. It seems that without fail, Southern California A/V club nerds find a way to get together dated Casio gear and bang on things in the name of noise art. And, almost inevitably (with MAYBE the exception of Dan Deacon, who is from New York, but still sort of sucks) it sucks.
This sort of thing plays better as a MySpace fiction than an onstage fact. Yeah, I know, Wikipedia says they're a hit at the Smell or whatever, but audience members at the El Rey (who weren’t The Mae Shi's personal Warcraft guildmates) weren't dancing or laughing, they were staring and waiting for it to end. The few moments that they coalesced into listenable song structure, as on “We Do This All The Time,” were totally tolerable. But mostly it was bullshit Wayne Coyne antics, minus the hooks, genius and talent. You'd think they'd be bored of doing this all the time by now.
For context: frontbag Jeffrey Joseph Byron revealed he had a pumpkin shirt on UNDER his felt pumpkin costume. LOL RANDOM!!!! Shut up Pitchfork, the emperor needs to take a trip to JC Penney, because I can totally see his grundle. I liked these clowns better when they were called The Mothras in 2001 and had my high school friends in the band instead of someone else's high school friends.