Ladytron always had a flair for the dramatic, they liked edgy, swooning darkness and detached melancholy. Their singers sounded sophisticated, remote and contemptuous. They had impeccable taste in music (electronica, shoegaze, goth), and dressed it up with hip and modern production. “Seventeen” is still a killer single.
The problem was that the songwriting wasn’t always there. They were one of the most repetitive bands of the 2000s, already an excessively minimalist decade for music. Most of their songs get by on pounding martial drums and electronic bass. In later years they added a one-note guitar drone, emulating the dense roar of shoegazing and industrial rock, but rarely writing a noteworthy riff or hook. They did do a fantastic remix of Nine Inch Nails, though.
Their newest album Gravity The Seducer grows a little, but not a lot. About half of it is almost identical to their last album Velocifero (which I think is their best), while the other half moves tentatively into deeper waters. Probably the newest thing about this album is the production. This is Ladytron at their biggest and spaciest — Velocifero’s heavy rhythms are drowned out by icy reverb and echoes. The singers are significantly downplayed. There are several instrumentals (“Ritual,” “Transparent Days,” “Aces High”), and many other songs either have the voices mixed low, or blanket them with so much reverb that one can barely make out any words.
This leads to one brilliant song, “Ambulances,” where reverberating lyrics and wordless chants sparkle like pristine ice in a glacial cavern. There is a drum track, but for the most part it is so low-key that it might as well not be there. It’s a blissful ambient blob, with some vague disquiet reaching out from under the surface. The synth line in the middle of the track feels almost classical, more openly emotional than is usual for Ladytron. This is no dance anthem, but it is an amazing spin on their ice-queen image.
Elsewhere, though, we’re in very familiar territory. “90 Degrees” is another ambient synth-ballad with distant echoing vocals and a majestically slow pace, just like “Tomorrow,” “White Light Generator” or “All The Way.” They’re good at this sound, but I can’t think of anything new to say about it, except perhaps that now it has slightly more prominent strings (classical instruments get more use on this album in general, though they mostly appear incidentally). I think “Tomorrow” had a more memorable chorus and was probably their best song in this style. “Ace Of Hz” is totally indistinguishable from any of the dance songs on Velocifero, with that sing-along, simple “ace of hearts” hook on repeat. “Ritual” could easily be a Velocifero out-take, with the same electro-bass.
Past Ladytron albums always had a couple show-stoppers that really made one take notice. Velocifero opened with “Black Cat,” where Mira Aroyo preened most dramatically atop swirling keyboards. Gravity The Seducer has nothing so immediate — the interesting moments are very low-key and often incidental to the structure of the songs. “White Elephant” on this album has the same exact background chimes from “Black Cat,” but the pace is more measured, Helen Marnie takes her time and misses that urgent vibe. But then, the song comes into its own with a pretty, lilting eastern European melody, and it sounds great! “Mirage” is probably the closest thing the album has to a Big Single, but the real draw isn’t Helen Marnie’s fairly typical vocal (where she tells “you” that “you do not exist”), it’s that weightless woodwind-like main melody that drifts into focus between verses. I also like the harsh twang in the outro — would be interesting to hear something like that in more of a techno setting.
By the way, Marnie dominates this album. I caught bits of Aroyo on “Moon Palace” and “Altitude Blues,” and I’m sure she must appear somewhere else too, but the production totally buries her. Marnie works better with that style, and that’s usually how past albums treated her, but Aroyo was always the abrasive counterpoint, which didn’t always work (“AMTV”), but sometimes led to their best songs (“Flicking Your Switch,” “Black Cat”). Gravity The Seducer is missing that, which may contribute to its overall blurry, indistinct feel.
There’s nothing really wrong with this album, it shows them experimenting with more complex instruments and detailed melodies, which really pays off in “Ambulances.” Between this album and Velocifero, I don’t think I’ll ever need to listen to Witching Hour ever again. They’re looking inward and developing certain very specific aspects of their style, which is ideal for fans, but there’s no strong push in any particular direction.
