La Roux

Love the new album by La Roux. I have it on my mp3 whilst out jogging. It gives me the energy to get up the hills. It’s all quite marvellous, particularly the singles and the they-should-be-singles I’m Not Your Toy and Cover My Eyes. They have it all. They have the look, the haircut, and the sound; somewhere between Yazoo’s first album and Yazoo’s second album. With maybe a spoonful of Blancmange. Oh, I recognise those synthesizers; it’s great to hear a band that have clearly been paying attention to Vince Clarke’s extraordinary ability to create layered arrangements from interweaving synth parts and his minimalist approach to middle eight solos. But without, for an instant, being retro; the songwriting is quirky, catchy, never obvious, the mixing is super-punchy and Elly‘s vocals are both vulnerable and gutsy. All in all, a great emotional, energy-filled kick.

Can’t help noticing, though, a certain reptition of certain lyrical device; the use of a life-threatening predicament as a metaphor for heartbreak. With that in mind, UTH can exclusively reveal some lyrics from La Roux’s second album:

It was a choice I couldn’t make
It was a chance I couldn’t take
A pain I couldn’t disguise
Hit me between the eyes
It was like standing on a garden rake
It was like standing on a garden rake

***

I should have read the lines I know
The skull and crossed-bone signs I know
But all my heart-aching, it was just like partaking
From a bottle marked ‘poison’
From a bottle marked ‘poison’

***

I’m at the edge and it’s too late
And there’s no ledge to halt my fate
No time to wonder ‘what if’
As I fall over the cliff
With my foot attached to a hundred-tonne weight
With my foot attached to a hundred-tonne weight