Metronomy @ Òran Mór, 23 September

It’s a risky strategy to have Edinburgh’s Discopolis opening the show tonight: the trio’s high-energy synthscapes threaten to raise the pitch of the evening beyond the reaches of Metronomy’s relatively subtle recent material. Joining the dots between anthemic shoegaze like Fuck Buttons, and the hallucinatory guitar washes of Ariel Pink, Discopolis command the crowd’s attention impressively, particularly considering the evening’s early start.

Nonetheless, Metronomy have built up a devoted fanbase over the course of three records, and despite a slightly subdued beginning to the set, the Brighton quartet sustain the heightened atmosphere easily enough. This year’s The English Riviera LP has a dreamy fragility in recorded form, but live, songs like Everything Goes My Way and The Bay acquire the robust funk of the earlier records. What is lost in terms of that album’s gentle wistfulness, then, is gained in infectious disco-fuelled poppiness.

For the bulk of the crowd, it’s still the older material that gets the warmest response: Heartbreaker and Radio Ladio, both from 2008’s Nights Out, have an anthemic feel eschewed on Riviera. The juxtaposition, however, emphasises the subtler strengths of the latter. It’s evident that Metronomy’s determination to push their indie-dance into newer, more melancholy realms is reaping concrete rewards.