BDSM MEDIA NEWS!!!!
11 june 2011
Ladytron - review
Source: www.guardian.co.uk - The Guardian - UK
UK - LONDON - Named after a Roxy Music song
, and enthusiastically endorsed by Brian Eno
, Ladytron's art-rock credentials are impeccable. However, 12 years into their career, and with a breakthrough single or album still proving frustratingly elusive, the Liverpool band
, may have to accept that a commercial great leap forward is simply never going to arrive.
They remain a formidable live proposition. Twin black-clad
dominatrix vocalists Helen Marnie and Mira Aroyo, are a compelling focus for their austere, early-80s-influenced synthpop machinations. Yet tonight they tellingly play only two songs from their imminent fifth album,
Gravity the Seducer, and the loyally enthusiastic audience response can't conceal that half the venue stands roped-off and empty.
It's a huge shame, as Ladytron remain masters of a school of arch, exotically foreboding glacial pop that exudes Mitteleuropa cold war angst.
The metronomic drumbeat and languorous ennui of High Rise, and
Ghosts, are thrillingly seductive, while Marnie and Aroyo's imperious hauteur transforms the throbbing
International Dateline, and
Soft Power, into delicious shrugs of ennui.
The problem is that Ladytron's immaculate production sheen lacks killer hooks and melodies: songs such as
Discotraxx, and
Fibua, merely locate a synth riff and vibrate portentously around it, while the setup of three keyboards and no guitars can leave the set sounding ponderously static.
They rectify this with the rave pulse and laser synths of tumultuous final encore
Destroy Everything You Touch, but on this evidence, Ladytron's star looks likely to remain dimmed.
