Review Summary: The ugly duckling turns into an ice queen.
Such an ordinary girl. Elly Jackson looks like a typical teenage shop assistant, sullen and spattered with freckles. Despite the rather sophisticated band name (La Roux – The Redhead), she looks suspiciously ginger to me. Doesn’t she know that pop stars,
female pop stars, should be blonde and doll-like, all mini-skirts and cleavage?
And what’s going on with her thin, reedy voice, with its straining falsetto, like fingernails slithering down a blackboard? She’s a professional singer for god’s sake. Doesn’t she realise female pop stars (Beyonce, Mariah Carey, Leona Lewis, Britney) should be pitch perfect, key perfect or just …perfect?
The only remarkable thing about her is her hair, all big and bequiffed, and even that, surprise surprise, is stolen from the 80s (A Flock Of Seagulls). Just like her synthpop backing music, with its bleeps and bloops sounding like a primitive Binatone or Atari video game. Even now, Vince Clarke (Depeche Mode, Yazoo/Yaz, Erasure) must be in the midst of filing a law suit for theft of his whole musical identity.
And here’s the thing. Even her lyrics are trite, with their typical boy meets girl fare. Except that Elly goes out of her way to deny this, trilling “I’m not your toy/This isn’t another girl meets boy” (
I’m Not Your Toy). Err, isn’t it? Which makes me wonder what exactly this is, if it isn’t that?
In fact, with the very first line of the first track (“we fight our desires” -
In For The Kill) she lets slip what this is really all about. What drives these songs is some kind of underlying primal force that, against all the odds, makes them compelling; thrilling even. But I’m not just talking about adolescence at its rawest; but about Elly’s struggle with her own sexuality. Nearly every song here revolves around desire, frustration, yearning, betrayal. There’s no real conception of love. Only sex, which is always dark, secret and hidden.
Elly provides a harrowing insight into what it must be like to be a gay teenager. At an age when hormones are raging, she reveals how confusing it is that your same-sex friends, the very ones you need to confide in, are the objects of your desire. The sense of loneliness on this record is palpable and by all accounts she did break down in tears during the recording of them.
As I have said, the music is retro and derivative, but that’s part of the fun, name-checking the influences (
In For The Kill=Yazoo/Yaz,
Tigerlily=Lady GaGa/Michael Jackson,
Quicksand=Prince,
Bulletproof=Dead or Alive,
Fascination=Kraftwerk,
Reflections are Protection=The Human League). Actually, as hook-laden as these songs are, perhaps the synth britannia arrangements may not do them any favours. By the second side the relentless synthesizers and electro beats do give off a rather one dimensional feel. Oh, to hear a bit of bass to beef up the sound, or some layers of guitar.
In 2009, at only 20, La Roux has taken the UK by storm with a no.1 and no.2 single, as well as another top twenty single, and a no.2 album. (And if the superb bonus track
Saviour is anything to go by, with its echo of This Mortal Coil, there will be more success on the way). But it wasn’t just commercial success. There was also much critical praise, with nominations for a whole host of prestigious awards, such as the Mercury Prize and The Brits.
Badly bullied at school for being ginger and boyish, perhaps Elly Jackson can now at last afford herself a smile.
