Of all the bands that I’ve been obsessed with over my life time, Ladytron was one that I came to on the later portion of their career. While I appreciate their first two albums, it wasn’t until the dark post-rock infusion of Witching Hour that I my ears suddenly perked up and I realized how much more there was to this band. Even then I wasn’t fully hooked and completely obsessed until Velocifero blew my head apart. To say that I’ve been waiting and anticipating a new Ladytron album since Gravity the Seducer was released almost a decade ago is an understatement of the century – at least in my household – so imagine how excited I was when all the rumors were confirmed by an e-mail from Pledge Music that they were in the studio working on a new album and then later when Spotify notified me that a new single – at the time “The Animals” – had been officially released. I lost my shit. Plain and simple.
So yes, I have a bias, and now that I’ve gotten that out of the way I’m going to attempt to be objective in the next 401 words here. The opening track, “Until The Fire” hits you with a dose of energy usually reserved for their more punkish tunes and grabs you by the collar as if to say: “Guess who’s back mother fucker?” New listeners will likely be hooked immediately while for the rest of us it’s a confirmation that despite how long they’ve been gone, they’re not about to disappoint us, launching immediately into “The Island” with a luscious and inviting synthscape.
One of the major tenets of this album is its embrace of “pure” electronica. While I’m sure there are other instruments than synthesizers, the synths come front and center, unlike Velocifero which embraced guitars and live drums more than any of their other works. It’s what makes Ladytron so damn good. They take pop into a dark place to remind us that love is much more multifaceted than the bubblegum crap blowing up the radio. The album is full of confrontational songs like “Tower of Glass” and “Figurine” that challenge the listener to reflect inward and outward, all the while being a hell of a lot of fun to dance to.
This is perhaps most exemplified lyrically by the lead single “The Animals,” a song that sounds like it could have been discarded from Gravity The Seducer musically, but tonally fits quite well in the middle of Ladytron and further hammers home the idea of the supposed separation of human intelligence separating them from other animals. It’s a theme that’s present throughout the album and when contrasted to world events and especially events here in the USA, it begs the question: Who are the animals? The chorus precisely states: “Is it that we know we are animals?/All because to them we are animals/You’re inventing words for defending me/While I know to shoot for the enemy/While I know to shoot from the enemy/You’re inventing words for defending me/It’s because to them we are animals/Or because we know we are animals.”
I hesitate to use the ‘P’ word but this album is damn near perfection and easily as strong of a comeback album as was Sleater-Kinney’s No Cities To Love four years ago. It’s refreshing, nostalgic, and uncompromising, three things that have always made Ladytron one of the best acts around. The album releases today, you’d be a fool not to give it a good long listen.
