Ladytron (UK)

In pop folklore, bands were allowed three LPs to become themselves, yet the fabled third album is an increasing rarity in this low attention span epoch.
So it comes as a bit of a rare treat to find that Liverpool-based boy / girl four-piece Ladytron have reached this mythical milestone with ‘Witching Hour’, their best album yet, and one that still fizzes and sparks with the band’s own idiosyncratic charms.

Yet ‘Witching Hour’ is an album that reaches further than its predecessors; warm and dense, there is a feeling of susceptible magic wrapped within its thirteen tracks - Ladytron have finally been allowed the grace to become themselves. It’s the first to give a truly rounded insight into what Helen Marnie, Mira Aroyo, Daniel Hunt and Reuben Wu, are all about. They can still make music starched and synthetic, cool and collected, but, unlike its predecessors ‘604′ and ‘Light & Magic’, at its core ‘Witching Hour’ is wild and unstable; a synth-pop record which rages with a new unbridled energy.
Their critically lauded 2001 debut ‘604′ album spawned a glut of imitators obsessing over vintage synths and asymmetric haircuts, yet Ladytron always stood apart, less concerned with the superficial. Their darker late 2002 release ‘Light & Magic’ featuring the worldwide cult hit ‘Seventeen’, was toured around the globe for 12 months, selling out coast to coast in the US along the way. Returning home, they started work immediately on their new record, but spent 2004 oscillating wildly while their UK and US record labels imploded, before signing to Island Records and completing the LP in 2005. In the interim they travelled, wrote, honed and perfected.

There may be shoegazy shades of Young Marble Giants, early Stereolab and the Cocteau Twins within the new album, yet the references remain oblique rather than obvious and it’s as much their development as a live band as their previous studio albums that informs the feel and swirling atmospheres of Witching Hour. It is the sound of an electronic band rediscovering their leftfield indie roots, experimenting, enlarging their palette of sound. And assisted in their sonic exploration by producer Jim Abbiss (DJ Shadow, Placebo, Kasabian) - sounding all the better for it.

Avoidance of the generic, has been crucial all along: “We’ve never been interested in being a trad. anything,” insists Mira. “Everything is done our own way. I’ve always been into Krautrock bands like Neu! and Can, and I love the fact that I can’t really tell what instruments they used. It doesn’t really matter.” Indeed, the beauty of ‘Witching Hour’ is not in guessing what instrument made which sound, it is in marvelling at how Ladytron have produced such a striking set of pop songs.
Few of their contemporaries have that grasp of sonic annihilation, that capability to blow your head aside even at the lowest of volumes. Ladytron can do this with ease. This is the sound of no compromise, spectral, other-worldly music that will reverberate through your head long after tonight is all over.
There’s a killer ballad, ‘Beauty Two’, a perfect (neo-gothic Northern Soul) pop song, ‘International Dateline’, and even one track, ‘Last One Standing’, which lays claim to a mutated Lee Hazelwood heritage. A similar restlessness and melancholy informs seismic processed rocker ‘Weekend’ - wherein Ladytron seemingly return to a favourite theme; the decadent escapism of the discotheque juxtaposed with a bed-sit reality.

Ladytron never explain, but they recognise that ‘Witching Hour’, with its ghosts, eerie imagery and its “daylight is the enemy” proclamations, is their darkest record to date. Says Mira, smiling wryly, “happy songs never made me happy. A lot of sad songs have”

Ladytron just fulfilled their potential. Prepare to fall in love with them all over again.

http://www.ladytron.com/
http://www.myspace.com/ladytron