Post War Years

Post War Years might want us to dance, but I'm going to give them none of it. There are two main types of music that make me want to contort myself - brash, smack in the face beats and rainbow-brite colours, good old cut-out-and-keep dirty sleaze, or the (near) opposite - mind-fuckingly intelligent mash and melange of time signatures and cut-n-paste melody fragments. In other words, the wonderfully dumb and the wildly creative.

Tonight, Post War Years aim at the latter, and don't even manage to achieve the former. They're all about creeping semi-tonal keyboard parts, parts that wind themselves up into endlessly dull sevenths and fourths, slightly dissonant, ever so dis-interesting. Clever on the surface, but below the surface there is seemingly little. Still, it's early days - and perhaps later days will see me promptly eat these derogatory words.

The Teenagers then - quite a different prospect, certainly aiming at the former, wonderfully dumb category, and surpassing any competition tonight in making monochrome musical pastiche of popular culture. Tongues firmly wedged in more than one place, the Teenagers are well aware that for all their profanities and emotional translucency, they can also manage cultural comment - "don't forget to send me a friend request" the backing track whines at the end of 'Homecoming', a strung-along lover seeking out virtual contact. We're having fun, wiping this sleaze all over ourselves, but it's a dirgey mess too - that song you've heard played in clubs (you can't forget it - "I fucked my american cunt / I love my english romance") sounds far better recorded than it does live, losing all vocal clarity and precision energy. As performances go, this isn't awe inspiring - gallic mumbling over a pre-determined backing track isn't the spectacle of silliness I wanted.

Bring on Metronomy, also aiming at the former and succeeding for certain. My feet are off, my hips soon to follow, arms uncrossed. Metronomy play pop in primary colours, drop beats in the obvious places, take my arm and swing me around, repeat and repeat, drop and repeat. They take the barest bones of a melody, abuse it over and over again, distort and release, pause then drop in the bass. Simple, effective, fun fucking times.

Metronomy is the brain-child of one man, Joseph, but live he is joined by Oscar and Gabriel. Oscar has mean ways with a melodica, Gabriel plays the simplest but absolutely functional bass-lines. All three are wearing a large light on their chests and are performing choreographed dodgy-disco moves - think Jarvis at Disco 2000. Crowd and band reciprocate each other in their giggling happiness. 'You could Easily Have Me' heats a packed-out room like popcorn in the saucepan, popping out of their skins toward ceilings. The most basic of melodies becomes the most irrepressibly catchy of songs. No doubt enough to turn a man into a jellied eel if listened to on headphones, but instead in a sweaty room with a welcome invitation to dance - marvellous. Childish stoic simplicity and repetition never felt quite so much fun.

Photography by Pavla Kopecna