NO SONG, for me, captures this post-Covid, end of almost all restrictions, return to ‘normal’ quite like Metronomy’s ‘It’s Good To Be Back’.
“It’s good to be back/but our love is gone…it feels so good to be right/Oh No,” Metronomy lead singer and songwriter, Joe Mount, intones over this euphoric and catchy slice of dance inducing electro-pop. The mixed emotions of the lyrics encapsulate how much of the old normal was, in fact, abnormal, and that realisation that some of it is not worth returning to.
Musically this track is very much the exception. This is an intimate, low key, album based mostly around the guitar - quite different from the band’s earlier electronic albums.
Small World begins with a rumination on endings, as Mount contemplates mortality in the strikingly John Lennon-esque ‘Life and Death’: “Get a go of both I guess/Neither one I fear less”.
The starkness of that song is offset by the warmth and intimacy of ‘Things Will Be Fine’. Mount’s low key vocals and the poignant, yet hopeful race and momentum of the guitar/piano melody, make what could be platitudinous lyrics into wise words from an old head.
‘Hold Me Tonight’, with Porridge Radio, is a dramatic and powerful look at a relationship filled with complex, contradictory, and obsessive feelings: “I’m trying to find the courage, but I can’t find it yet…So you found the courage, do you regret it yet?”
Small World is a small sounding album, but with a big heart, and songs that deserve a warm welcome, and a place in your ears.
