Remember the future? How futuristic it was going to be? Cripes, yo, it's 2002-- weren't we supposed to have brainphones and hover-beers by now? Weren't we supposed to be able to seduce our relatives and combat Biff by time-traveling in Deloreans fueled by sewage? Wasn't the government supposed to be teleporting the homeless to Haiti while they sleep? Where are my in-foot skates?
Ladytron certainly remembers the future, and they've grasped that it will be symbiotically reliant on the technological dreamwaves of the past-- namely old synth textures. As major playaz in the key-heavy, retro-progressive Genre That Hath Too Many Names, these four Brits knew that stakes was high for their sophomore slab. Anyone expecting the warm organs of 604 will be stung by this disc's stark, arch tones; the band's no longer sittin' on the dock of the analog bay. The distant, bloodless Light & Magic is club-fodder for some Kubrickian half- or post-human future in which android scum mimic the moves of the mammals they were built to replace.
Those who dismiss Ladytron releases as "More Songs About Fashion and Dreck" get subjected to the circular logic of the Ladytron fanatics who insist that anyone who doesn't get it simply doesn't get it. Despite Ladytron's popularity (congrats on the car commercial, gang, that industry really needed more stylized fetish-marketing!), these satin-jacket-and-secret-handshakes fans act as if the group is still their hidden prize. They also claim that Ladytron are the arbiters of some savvy cultural criticism. Call me thick, but I don't hear it-- and I promise I'm listening for it, as one of the few eager listeners aware that at the peak of boredom perch those who act bored by cult-crit. But where is the sly commentary in songs such as "Blue Jeans", "Cracked LCD", and "Black Plastic", which are about blue jeans, cracked LCDs, and black plastic? And how, on other tracks, can these dashing primpers bemoan the tyranny of fashion? That's like self-arresting inmates, or anti-potassium bananas, or...
So you're all, "Let's 'Tron again/ Like we did last summer," only to realize that camp is never as good the second time around. And of course, Ladytron's camp is fussily campy. "Turn It On" might be daft, but it's a classic guilty pleasure, reeking of roller-rink digi-breeziness and reminiscent of certain Mantronix/Salt-N-Pepa/Herbie Hancock unmentionables. In fact, more than a couple of these tracks evoke a strange, reverbed collaboration between Yaz and Sir-Mix-A-Lot. Ladytron fans with CDR's full of "Playgirl" remixes had better recalibrate their ometer-ometers to withstand the shock; we're a long way from their cover of Human League's "Open Your Heart". I draw the kitsch line at "Flicking Your Switch", though-- any sophistos laboring to trace Ladytron's roots to aggro-dance greats will hopefully acknowledge that this thin riff summons only, er, (cough) Technotronic.
If you're insecure about how these frozen jams polarize your mind, ask people in proximity to you for their reactions: someone whose opinion I value, who is usually tolerant of my stereo worship, demanded that I stop Light & Magic, citing the repetition and the buried vox as key irritants. A pretentious idiot told me that the album was "post-millennial", whatever the ass that's supposed to mean in the year 2002. (Man, that was a post-millennial "Everybody Loves Raymond" last night.) The non-idiot had a point: this album repeats itself exponentially. I know the songs go nowhere on purpose; that's part of the robo-statement, etc. But I promise you'll want out of this antiseptic defertilization ward unless you're planning a stasis-themed party at the old warehouse out on Cellphone Tower Ave.
Mixed signals abound and obtain and endure: the album is by turns ominous and playful; for every passage that feels like ghosts haunting the intercoms at an abandoned airport, there are stretches like "Seventeen", which, be warned, is the only thing in the world catchier than Quincy Jones' "Sanford and Son" theme. I won't even type its chorus for fear of its voodoo. For every blatant genre flirtation, you get an ice-pop turn like the bouncily experimental "Re:agents", which lays claim to a killer flute loop and even dares to meander during its breakdown. The disc's vocals approximate Kim Deal's at welcome intervals, and some Faint-ish noise-blasts emerge, betraying the sheepish control booth.
Don't judge this beast by its look-at-me packaging, which reads like one of those salon samplers you "read" while waiting for your haircut at 3:15 while your stylist and her 3:00 commiserate about their junkie boyfriends. Ladytron has succeeded at programming a record so distant that you'll wonder just what comprises the wind beneath their wires.
