The Singles Jukebox

Cruel summer ’08…

[Video][Website]
[6.17]

Katie Gill: The song starts off so slow I had to double check that my volume wasn’t muted. Once it starts up however, we’re left with a remarkably good piece of electronica that’s somehow chill and peppy at the same time.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: I always forget what Metronomy actually sounds like and expect toothless, pleasant soft-rock. Toothless, unpleasant cod-funk about a whiny vocalist and his ex’s dreaded Lady Gaga music is not an improvement.
[2]

Claire Biddles: Some break-up songs are relatable because they are universal, and some are relatable because they filter a familiar feeling through specifics. “Night Owl” is from a record called Summer 08, so it’s clear from the start that this is going to be about a particular person. At first I thought the date might be in reference to when they broke up, but it’s clear from the smarting bitterness in the song that it’s when they got together. A reference to “FM radio hosts playing ‘Paparazzi'” situates the story of the song in a fixed time and place, but also perfectly evokes the moment when a soundtrack to a love affair becomes unlistenable as love rots away — I think of all the songs I’ve deleted from my computer, all the records I’ve hidden at the back of the stack, only to hear them in a bar, unavoidable and daring to remain omnipresent when I want to forget. “Night Owl” is bitter and cruel and pathetic and self-loathing, but haven’t we all been those things?
[8]

Brad Shoup: As I understand it, the whole record’s literally about the summer of 2008. Less understandable is this song’s choice to recreate a casually sour reaction to a breakup. Gothic pronouncements alternate with the magnetic pull of downtown parties; he references “Paparazzi” just to tweak it. I wonder what utility there is in resurrecting a shittier you, especially when so many of our past shitty selves are amply documented. I also wonder about the artistry in it. His track’s more willing to interrogate the past than his text is (though he does get in a cracking rhymeset on the chorus). It doesn’t sound like the mutant disco of Nights Out: the grim danceability and rigid interplay are more of the same, if not a step forward. But they — along with Joe Mount’s acidly resigned tenor — suggest someone coming home from those parties and putting on Neon Bible. That shit was always bad.
[5]

Scott Mildenhall: He doesn’t actually date the reference, but as pop songs are one of the most enduring bookmarks of a moment in time to be placed in the mind, Joe Mount should be aware that “Paparazzi” was a hit in ’09, and not Summer 08. Fair enough if he’s making that connection though: the memory is hazy and the writing is lazy — or at least not “thoughtful,” as he protests. Haziness and laziness, remembered and in remembering, are in any case “Night Owl”‘s key. To a knackered production flitting in and out of the whirling synth of its dream sequence chorus, Mount seems to be simply looking for a beacon.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Not a Gerry Rafferty cover, nor a band effort — Joe Mount recorded “Night Owl” by his lonesome. That nagging single note played on his guitar is the kind of simple hook that mediocre bands spend forever trying to find. The breathy Junior Boys-indebted vocal should be resisted at all costs, though.
[7]