If any band was going to bounce back from years of acrimonious hiatus with a soundtrack to our troubled times, Ladytron seemed unlikely contenders. Yes, that Ladytron, from Liverpool, whose heavy-lidded, robo-cool vocals defined the electroclash movement of the early 2000s and who haven’t released anything since 2011. And yet their eponymous return is an immersive, invigorating and convincingly brooding stomp of disenfranchisement.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising for a band whose breakout hit was the glassy-eyed electro evisceration Destroy Everything You Touch. And so there are doomy goth-disco songs such as The Animals, Paper Highways and Horrorscope – the latter track almost as heavy as Nine Inch Nails in its serrated swagger – with their foreboding lyrics that suggest doomsdays, dystopias and “sleepwalking into the fire”.
It’s possible to hear echoes of synth-pop bands they’ve influenced, too, on sparkling kosmische-pop opener Until the Fire (School of Seven Bells) and The Island (Chvrches). Deadzone, meanwhile, with its stabby synths, trance-like euphoria and catchy-as-hell chorus, could easily have been sung by any chart pop star of the last few years. You’ve Changed is another standout, wearing its Gary Numan-isms on its sleeve.
This album was largely crowdfunded via Pledge Music and was written remotely, from places as far flung as Chicago and São Paulo, where some members are now based, but it is seductively cohesive, glazed in experience. “This world keeps turning,” they sing on Paper Highways. Better so with Ladytron in it.
