In the next episode of my ongoing series of posts where I lament not being able to see some great acts playing in Stockholm this wonderful month of May we will listen to the popular British hipster former blog buzzband Metronomy who played at Debaser Medis last night. Very much overlooked, probably because they sound so 00′s indie it hurts, I thought it was a shame they didn’t get more recognition from the very start when I first heard demos from their then forthcoming second album, titled Nights Out, doing the blogrounds in 2007. That album has so many shiny gems it’s hard to pick out one as their best. Should I pick the wonky instrumental continuation of the intro track, The End Of You Too? Should I pick the sassy Radio Ladio with its really cool guitar lick? Should I pick the completely insane alien dance party of My Heart Rate Rapid? Should I pick the funny and catchy instrumental On The Motorway? Should I pick the post-punk post-disco post-everything dance anthem Holiday? Should I pick the quirky and corny pop song A Thing For Me?
No, I should pick Heartbreaker, the song that pushed Metronomy beyond the indie dancefloors and into everyone’s hearts. It’s probably their most accessible, and therefore their most popular song. It starts off kind of dull, a sense further accentuated by their trademark cute-ugly sound. It perfectly blends with video for the song, where we in the beginning see Oscar Cash of the band, sitting in some dull British smalltown café, drinking coffee alone, obviously mopey. The two other boys from the band pick him up and take him for a ride. By now the small background synths can be heard expressing the lament and feeling of dejection of this song. The guys try cheering him up, at first with no result. Lead singer Joseph Mount opens up the dialogue:
I heard she broke your heart again
So now you’re gonna come and see me
We’re back to the start again
‘When’s she gonna set me free?’.
By now we’re thinking ”aww, male bonding trying to cheer up a buddy”. But things grow more complicated, it seems the feelings are more than plain sympathy, they’re in fact mutual:
I’ve been there time and time again
The girl’s no good for me and you
She hurts me too
It’s quite a femme fatale that two thirds of Metronomy have been fooled by, and we’re not talking about Britney Spears either.
While things are passively depressive in the beginning, the chorus stacks up synths amplifying up the mood to heartbreak doom. Still, they seem blunt from emotional exhaustion. The brief chorus leads up to a rather uninspired and obvious conclusion.
I heard she broke your heart again
I heard she broke your heart
Well that girl’s a heartbreaker
The video really conveys this blunt, careless feeling of pointlessness of everything after suffering from a heartbreak and so does the song. It’s one of the band’s most downplayed and serious songs, but also melodically welcoming and comforting in its own way. The last words of the song are a snapshot of the last stage of heartbreak: stopping feeling sorry for oneself and starting to formulate an emotionally overreacting but still stringent sense of bitterness and even anger.
Heartbreaker
I’ll break her
Heartbreaker
I’ll break ya
Bro’s before ho’s y’all.
Listen to Heartbreaker on Spotify!
And watch the charming video! It’ll melt and not break your heart!
