Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 29/06/09
Label: Polydor

Credit where credit is due: ever since the RoMo debacle of the mid-'90s, followed by the damp squib of electroclash, whole armies of publicists, excitable pop journalists and hipster musicians have feverishly plotted to make the British public party like its 1982 again but La Roux are the first to have made this dystopian/utopian (delete according to preference) vision a reality.

So while the likes of Fischerspooner, Ladytron and MGMT scooped up hype, awards and lucrative "Hollyoaks" background music opportunities, it took La Roux's second single, the shrilly addictive "In For The Kill", to actually become a top two, 14-weeks-in-the-Top-20, bona fide chart smash. Any hopes/fears this might prove an aberration were scuppered this week by the turbo-charged, snappy-like-bubblegum "Bulletproof" entering the chart at Number One, as well as a surprisingly acclaimed Glastonbury appearance.

Which leads to an obvious question: "why them?" It's certainly not because they've softened out the awkward edges of '80s electro-pop: it would be hard to imagine a more defiantly synthetic, often ugly homage to that era (or, at least, that part that belonged to Eurythmics, the Human League, Gary Numan and early Depeche Mode). Nor is it a matter of personality: onstage and in interviews, singer Elly Jackson seems to have delegated hers to her haircut. So, as always in pop, the answer must lie in the melodies.

The best of these melodies are like the common cold: infectious, stubborn and apparently indestructible, no matter what you throw at them. So although, musically, "I'm Not Your Toy" sounds as tinny and infuriating as being stuck on Sonic The Hedgehog level four for a week, Jackson's urgent, pleading vocal somehow redeems it. And the fierce verses and honeyed choruses of "Tigerlily" are so sharp they survive even the ham-fisted blip pop that surrounds them, as well as an appallingly embarrassing spoken word homage to "Thriller", courtesy of the singer's father.

Not everything on "La Roux" sounds quite as belligerently, kitschly dated. In addition to the hits, "Colourless Colour" is almost understated in its melancholia, while "Fascination" surges along on jittery beats and a big, swooping vocal turn. There is more than enough pop fuel here to maintain La Roux's unlikely momentum for a while.

But for their next move, they should remember that the reason so much early-'80s electro sounded cheap and rudimentary (sometimes thrillingly so) was because the technology was so new. They don't have that excuse, which makes their retro fetishism an affectation. And affectations have a habit of becoming irritations very fast indeed.

    by Jaime Gill