Joseph Mount is in a good place. He’s a recent father with a ten-month old son and life is getting busy again thanks to the soon-to-arrive follow-up to Metronomy’s Mercury Music Prize-nominated third album, The English Riviera.

He’s also standing on the platform at Paris Gare du Nord waiting for the Eurostar back to England. Next week he’ll be trailing Metronomy’s fourth album, Love Letters, in Brighton, the city where he still has a house (in which keys and sax player Oscar Cash lives) and spent his student days.

Mount admits his son has changed the way he thinks but the arrival has not affected the new ten-track album.

“I made a conscious decision to not let that [the baby] affect anything. All the songs were written before the baby came along. I didn’t want to write any mushy lovey dovey stuff.”

The pop sentiment abounds on Love Letters, though. From I’m Aquarious’s luscious doo-wops to title track Love Letters’ four-to-the-floor Motown. He even name-checks slick Scottish pop-rockers Deacon Blue on The Upsetter.

“I have these distinct memories of 1992 and being in a toy shop and them on the radio – and the thing with Deacon Blue songs is I never know what the dude is saying.”

He hums the band’s Real Gone Kid...

“Their voices are so satisfying. It’s not a guilty pleasure. In fact, as you can tell by what I just did, I’m not an aficionado, I just know the singles.”

Another reference on The Upsetter is Tasmin Archer.

“I also remember watching Top Of The Pops when I was ten and for some reason I had become aware of death and mortality and what it meant to me.

“And Tasmin Archer came on with the music video for Sleeping Satellite and it made me think about life and the end of life and everything. It was a rather emotional time.

“Unfortunately for those artists they came out when I was ten years old and that just happened to be when I learnt about death and toy shops.”

As Mount has moved from bedroom producer, a “slightly niche guy making stuff”, to having his tracks closing Pedro Almodóvar films (The Look graces 2013 black comedy I’m So Excited) and headlining the Royal Albert Hall, he has become more relaxed about his influences.

“I’ve let back in that love of ’60s guitar music that has been there since I was a teenager.

“That is where I was when I was first playing in bands. We listened to Love, Sly And The Family Stone, The Byrds.

“But Love Letters is not some throwback record. It’s adding to it.”

Sparse but true

He calls it honest, “not affected”.

“You get so many people who get stopped short by labels, but I know who I am. After you have been allowed to be make four albums no one stops you.”

So Mount decided to record Love Letters to eight-track tape in an analogue studio, London’s Toe Rag, rather than fiddling with computers.

It made for a quick recording process – the record was finished last summer – and for a subtle and structured sound.

“That was not the idea but that’s what happens in an old studio with old equipment.”

By sticking to sparse arrangements and binning the sheen and extras you find in standard studios, Mount (along with his engineer Ash Workman) created what he calls a “pure sound”.

“We started approaching it like you do normally but realised after the first few days, the less we did the better it sounded.”

Metronomy is still very much the Mount show. He wrote everything and again self-produced, but he admits he had to reel himself in over his initial idea of a double album.

“To begin with I was adamant I would do a double album, be wild, but then I decided if I had any misgivings about any song it should not be on the record.

“I always feel like I have a clear idea of what I want because it’s this thing that is personal. I know I don’t want to embarrass myself and release something bad.

“I was much harsher this time.”