May 25, 2008
Ladytron
I've been devoted to Ladytron since they first appeared on the scene. They're one of the clearest and most talented voices of that post-rock, 80's electro-atavist sound that came out of the late 90s.
The 604 album was one of those albums that hit you at the perfect time, place and headspace (in my case, 1999 and San Francisco). For me it instantly became one of those "soundtrack of your life" albums that you have running in your head when you're doing other things. Every time I'm walking through some strange airport I've never seen before, I still feel like I have that track Playgirl running in the background, like film music.
Foreign coins in a telephone box...
A question mark on a calendar...
An empty seat on the Alpha Line...
A sorting code and account number...
Light and Magic was a deeper convolution of their clean early electro sound. And the aggressive yet still clinical, almost "Soviet" Witching Hour was an unexpected evolution that also became one of my favorite albums ever. They just kept getting better and better.
But it was killing me because I was always in the wrong city to see Ladytron live - when I was living in Copenhagen they missed the city on their European tours, and I'd always be on an assignment somewhere when they were playing someplace close like Berlin. When I was in the Netherlands for a class reunion in 2005 I missed their Amsterdam show by a week (I had to get back to work right after the reunion - grrr...). Finally, fed up, I booked a flight to New York to catch them when they played there - and it turned out the NYC date listed on their website was wrong! (And my ticket was nonrefundable - Not that I was complaining about a week in NYC, mind you).
So last night I finally caught Ladytron live after chasing them around the planet for almost ten years. I was ecstatic when they rocked the house with older tracks like Soft Power, Discotrax, and especially when they closed with Destroy Everything You Touch.
I'm listening to the new album Velocifero now, and it's... good. It's still the Ladytron sound but it doesn't have the energy or ingenuity of Witching Hour. Sure, I'll give it three and a half or four stars, all the while admitting that after the genius of their last three albums I've been spoiled rotten.
Posted by case at May 25, 2008 03:39 PM