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LadytronWitching Hour Island/UMG Remember electroclash? Wasn't that a hilarious movement? God, I remember listening to Fisherspooner and Miss Kittin and thinking "oh boy, this is totally the sound of the future! Yeah, write some more songs about the Internet, or spell your song titles phonetically to show how unbound you are by convention! No rulez!" The main thing that stuck in my craw was that there were a bunch of bands that were vaguely lumped in with the movement who were far too talented and interesting to be so easily pigeonholed (Add N To X, Peaches, even - bafflingly - cut-up goddesses Cobra Killer) but the one that really made me choke on my rock criticism was Ladytron. Their genius debut '604' was an electropop classic - as befits an all-synth quartet that named themselves after a Roxy Music song - and the sprawling and slightly less satisfying follow up 'Light & Magic' even brought organic instruments into the mix. At first listen 'Witching Hour' has more in common with their debut than its immediate predecessor: it's almost all synthesiser sonics with Helen Marnie's sweet voice matched with Mira Aroyo's coldly European tones, and if there's nothing as immediately beguiling as Seventeen or He Took Her To A Movie, 'Witching Hour' is still the band's strongest album overall. The urgent High Rise sets the scene for the album, detached vocals atop a driving sequencer like Add N To X channelling Stereolab, before Destroy Everything You Touch bursts in like the sort of effortless pop single that New Order used to churn out. Then the sparse International Dateline bops along over a simple, repetitive bass line and first single Sugar feeds The Doors' Hello I Love You through a wood-chipper to produce a snarling, sexy slab of electro. If the second half of the album isn't as brilliant as the first, it's merely because the standard has been set so high. It's a more economical album than 'Light & Magic', both in length (the solid twelve tracks don't overstay their welcome, even given the irksome 15 minutes of silence after the closing All The Way...) and the band have pared their arrangements back to the absolute necessities. If there's a criticism to be made it's that Aroyo doesn't get enough mic-time (while Marnie's voice is perfectly suited to the material, it's Aroyo's Nico/Dietrich world-wearyness that really shows the Clients of this world who's boss), but 'Witching Hour' is a jaw-droppingly good album. I wonder what movement will adopt them next?  |
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