Now, regular readers of this blog will know that I, by all accounts, loathe and despise everything. I am the very image of the snide, snarky internet blogger, casting bilious aspersions over everything I see from the cold cathode-ray comfort of my keyboard. I should abhor popularity. I should discard commonality. I should by all rights stay on-message and disown the mainstream simply for being mainstream. That's me, Generic Internet Blogger #4,000,001. I'm called "I Hope You Catch Fire", for heaven's sake. So why is it, then, that I consider La Roux's self-titled debut as easily the best album of 2009?
I've spent the last few days listening to it over and over, trying to find out quite what it is about this quirky, be-quiffed androgynous synthpop act that I like. Or, more honestly, desperately trying to pick holes in something I simply cannot fault.
Singer Elly Jackson makes the band. It's that simple. Producer Ben Langmead has done a fantastic job throughout the album, but it's Jackson's dreamlike falsetto - which I admit is likely something you'll either love or hate - and lyricism make it what it is, filling the album with a kind of joyful melancholy, a sound somewhere between Gary Numan and Lily Allen filtered through a mask of all too average twentysomething insecurity. Relationship songs, sure, but ones with impressive depth and introspection in a pop landscape where Lady Gaga is scoring top ten hits singing about riding my disco stick. It really is something of a triumph of substance over style - not that there's any absence of style on this record; it delivers wonderful touches in spades.
You'll have all heard the number one smash, 'In For The Kill', which at current standing is the fourth-biggest-selling single of the year, and hopefully enjoyed it's simple bitpop synth lines and Jackson's unique voice, but underneath that there was some truly excellent use of reverb and vocal doubling. 'Bulletproof', their first number one hit, proved that the band could do a modern mainstream pop sound better than any truly mainstream pop act today. It's not a favourite of mine, but neither you nor I can deny that it has everything a pop single needs.
Then there are two of my favourites; "I'm Not Your Toy", which barely cracked the top 30 but has a hook that surely should have taken it far higher, opens with a synth line that clearly consciously apes the music of the 16-bit gaming era that it's target audience grew up with. If it was up to me, this would have been the La Roux single to get to number one, but it's still not my favourite song off the album, even if it will leave you, if you're anything like me, humming the hook for days after you first hear it. That honour falls elsewhere with, horror of horrors, an album track.
You see, much as I like "I'm Not Your Toy", and in fact most of the entire album, nothing sums up or takes advantage of the dreamlike qualities of Jackson's voice quite like "Armour Love". A microcosm of the album as a whole, it's slow, gentle melancholy carries you into a world where everything's in slow motion soft focus, the perfect musical accompaniment to a teenager lonely in love. It's wonderful. It's beautiful. I know that in this age of digital downloads you can buy album tracks as easy as headline singles, but buy the album just for this track, because it's worth much more than the 79p iTunes tells me it's worth. It's the best losing-love song in ten years, because all of us have had that first love we thought meant everything, and we all lost it because we were stupid teenagers. We've all felt the exact way the song describes, and the song isn't the least bit either pretentious or ashamed in it's depiction. It's perfect.
Are La Roux going to change the face of music? Probably not. Are they going to sell ten million records and dominate the face of pop for the next ten years? No - Elly Jackson, though she has her own vulnerable charm, isn't marketable to the boys-with-posters demographic the same way Cheryl Cole is, and her musical stylings lack the overtly sexual, girl-power element that makes Lady Gaga such a marketable phenomenon.
What they have done, though, is produce easily the best unashamedly pop album in years.
I've spent the last few days listening to it over and over, trying to find out quite what it is about this quirky, be-quiffed androgynous synthpop act that I like. Or, more honestly, desperately trying to pick holes in something I simply cannot fault.
Singer Elly Jackson makes the band. It's that simple. Producer Ben Langmead has done a fantastic job throughout the album, but it's Jackson's dreamlike falsetto - which I admit is likely something you'll either love or hate - and lyricism make it what it is, filling the album with a kind of joyful melancholy, a sound somewhere between Gary Numan and Lily Allen filtered through a mask of all too average twentysomething insecurity. Relationship songs, sure, but ones with impressive depth and introspection in a pop landscape where Lady Gaga is scoring top ten hits singing about riding my disco stick. It really is something of a triumph of substance over style - not that there's any absence of style on this record; it delivers wonderful touches in spades.
You'll have all heard the number one smash, 'In For The Kill', which at current standing is the fourth-biggest-selling single of the year, and hopefully enjoyed it's simple bitpop synth lines and Jackson's unique voice, but underneath that there was some truly excellent use of reverb and vocal doubling. 'Bulletproof', their first number one hit, proved that the band could do a modern mainstream pop sound better than any truly mainstream pop act today. It's not a favourite of mine, but neither you nor I can deny that it has everything a pop single needs.
Then there are two of my favourites; "I'm Not Your Toy", which barely cracked the top 30 but has a hook that surely should have taken it far higher, opens with a synth line that clearly consciously apes the music of the 16-bit gaming era that it's target audience grew up with. If it was up to me, this would have been the La Roux single to get to number one, but it's still not my favourite song off the album, even if it will leave you, if you're anything like me, humming the hook for days after you first hear it. That honour falls elsewhere with, horror of horrors, an album track.
You see, much as I like "I'm Not Your Toy", and in fact most of the entire album, nothing sums up or takes advantage of the dreamlike qualities of Jackson's voice quite like "Armour Love". A microcosm of the album as a whole, it's slow, gentle melancholy carries you into a world where everything's in slow motion soft focus, the perfect musical accompaniment to a teenager lonely in love. It's wonderful. It's beautiful. I know that in this age of digital downloads you can buy album tracks as easy as headline singles, but buy the album just for this track, because it's worth much more than the 79p iTunes tells me it's worth. It's the best losing-love song in ten years, because all of us have had that first love we thought meant everything, and we all lost it because we were stupid teenagers. We've all felt the exact way the song describes, and the song isn't the least bit either pretentious or ashamed in it's depiction. It's perfect.
Are La Roux going to change the face of music? Probably not. Are they going to sell ten million records and dominate the face of pop for the next ten years? No - Elly Jackson, though she has her own vulnerable charm, isn't marketable to the boys-with-posters demographic the same way Cheryl Cole is, and her musical stylings lack the overtly sexual, girl-power element that makes Lady Gaga such a marketable phenomenon.
What they have done, though, is produce easily the best unashamedly pop album in years.
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