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Miss Kitten, Le Tigre, The Trucks
Nettwerk Records
Ladytron: Velocifero
- Electropop
- 2008
- Buy the CD
Reviewed by James B. Eldred
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adytron’s 2005 release The Witching Hour saw them moving away from the rapidly-declining electroclash scene that they helped build with 2002’s Light & Magic. On The Witching Hour, they showed that they could move past simple keyboard beats and repetitive lyrics and deliver a record of solid synthpop-influenced dance tunes. Now the girls (and guys) are back with Velocifero, an album named after a scooter, an eclectic album featuring a cornucopia of sounds that all share catchy basslines, beautiful melodies and sexy/bored vocals by Helen Marnie, who has taken the art of erotic disinterest and elevated it to an art form that the Robert Palmer girls could only have dreamed of.
Parts of Velocifero are classic Ladytron. “Ghosts” is built on the repetitive vocal hook “There’s a ghost in me / Who wants to say I’m sorry / Doesn’t mean I’m sorry.” What does that mean? Does it matter if it makes no sense if it sounds cool?
“Deep Blue” is similar, featuring an almost gravelly-voiced Marnie extolling all things she wants to do to Deep Blue: “Deep Blue I want to give it all to you / Deep Blue I want to take you to the sun.” While the idea of Marnie signing her love for the IBM chess-playing supercomputer is kind of hot, this song is probably not about that robotic chessmaster.
No matter what kind of sound Ladytron is going for from album to album, they always maintain their unique dreamlike style, making it hard to figure out where exactly they are drawing their influences from. Taking a guess, it seems that with Velocifero the group is experimenting slightly with the lo-fi sound of the burgeoning chiptune scene (which relies mainly on antiquated video game systems and computer equipment to produce a distorted, vintage sound) and the dance-happy New Rave/dance-punk sound. Nothing here sounds like something the Klaxons or LCD Soundsystem might record, but you can totally see them including fast-paced dance tracks like “The Lovers” and the amazing “Burning Up” in their DJ sets.
The chiptune/dance-punk influence is just a guess, though; who knows where Ladytron gets the ideas for their surreal/dreampop epics. This is an album that features not one, but two tracks recorded entirely in Bulgarian. It seems like a random choice, but “Black Cat” and “Kletva,” the two Bulgarian cuts, are two of the best tracks on the album. Maybe they’re onto something.
Even taking into account their more eclectic style and language choices, Ladytron still sounds like Ladytron – which is a very good thing.
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