Overseas, La Roux (real name: Elly Jackson) is hot shit right now.
The 21-year-old Londoner’s dance-club electro-bounce sounds like
something from 1983, right when U.S. record companies starting scooping
up new-wave divas and selling them to famished music fans as the
future. But Jackson and Ben Langmaid — the other half of
La Roux‘s creative force — sidestep that whole
“future” thing by making their debut album a big bear hug of retro
love. The beats are rinky-dink and robotic, the vocals are shrill and
flat, and that’s just the way they planned it (the U.K. has detached
hipsters too, you know). When Jackson latches onto a hook — like
on the opening “In for the Kill” — La Roux halfway lives
up to its hype. But most of the time, the album soaks in its own
synth-pop self-awareness. The real keeper is “Bulletproof,” the song
that made La Roux such a big deal in the first place. More of these and
she could move beyond the ’80s. — Gallucci
This article appears in Sep 30 – Oct 6, 2009.
