Metronomy is Joseph Mount, and in live form, it also includes Gabriel Stebbing and Oscar Cash as support musicians. According to Mount, who has long been a very in-demand remixer, Nights Out, his second album, had its genesis as "a half-arsed concept album about going out and having a crap time". It's not entirely clear how much of that concept remains in this finished product - especially given that only half of the tracks have vocals to tell us what they're about - but perhaps that reference to concept albums is a signal of the intelligent, varied and consistently interesting set of tracks that Nights Out consists of.The album is sequenced as though it has a concept behind it - "Nights Intro" and "Nights Outro" bookend everything else, and "Back On The Motorway" is titled like a reprise of "On The Motorway". Curiously, these pairs of tracks actually have very little in common, but despite that the sequencing and titling decisions clearly weren't accidental. The 7th of the twelve tracks is even called "Side 2", and is draped in vinyl-esque crackling and hiss.Although some of these tracks initially seem a bit formulaic, they also often seem designed to invert a few dance and electronica tropes. "Radio Ladio" isn't quite the predictable dance love song it first appears to be, and the lyrics to "Heartbreaker" help it escape the deeply unoriginal piece it could have been by making it intriguingly schizophrenic in style. In the same vein, "Back On The Motorway" is a song with an unexpected narrative twist mid way through. There are also lots of different voices heard on the album, each playing different roles - Mount's is that of the straight-man, whereas others are female characters in these little club scenes or sound like unhinged voices from the psyche.Musically, Mount has tried to inject as much unpredictability as possible into Nights Out. One of his main objectives seems to have been to avoid repetition - even the corker of a chorus in "A Thing For Me" doesn't appear very often, as Mount refuses to over-milk his creative cows. This restraint is evident throughout the album, and helps it sound more coherent and rounded, as opposed to a hammering, self-referential monotony. Probably the most repetitive track is "On The Motorway" which is also, tellingly, the shortest one on the album. There are also a lot of very distinct sounds here - the beats can be regimented or erratic, and consist of anything from handclaps to militaristic marching band drums. Often one synth is doing a straightforward cyclic thing while another is given freedom to move, snaking around unpredictably in the background.The strongest tracks are probably those with vocals - "Radio Ladio" is a hugely fun slow-builder, "Heart Rate Rapid" is a vibrant, pacey thrill, and perhaps best of all is "A Thing For Me" which is a superb mix of male and female voices, an interesting little story, and an ingeniously catchy chorus.Nights Out pretty much does what electronic music is meant to do - sound futuristic and exciting, without resorting to mind-numbing repetition or a dumb lack of ambition. It is varied and inherently engaging album which deserves to be heard, even by those would normally write this off on principle. 89%Metronomy on MySpace