Review Summary: Ladytron’s regression from electropop masters to dream pop wannabes yields mixed results.
If you at all call yourself a fan of electropop and are somehow not familiar with Ladytron already, you’re doing yourself a great disservice. The band’s impressive legacy of work throughout the 2000s remains seated at the highest tier of slightly-sophisticated synth-driven pop music, thanks in large part to timeless anthems such as Playgirl, Seventeen and the eternally cool Destroy Everything You Touch. Unfortunately it’s this legacy that has rendered Ladytron’s most recent efforts since returning from hiatus all the more disappointing in context.
Time’s Arrow sees the band lean further into the dream pop influences first prominently observed in Gravity the Seducer, although it’s the more conventional songwriting to be found in tracks like City of Angels and Faces which immediately catches the ear, each feeling not so far removed from the best material that consensus magnum opus Witching Hour had to offer. The drive, directness and sheer presence to be found within what are otherwise basic song structures align perfectly with Ladytron’s alchemistical track record of polishing common-as-copper verse-chorus pop progressions into regal synth gold. The grand and enchanting Misery Remember Me meanwhile speaks positively to the potential of their gradual shift in sound over recent years with its larger-than-life anthemic chorus, oscillating between the delicate and euphoric amidst its majestic soundscape. Elsewhere, The Night strides forward with a confidence well-earned thanks to intoxicating synthwave keys and intricate, breathy vocals, approaching a level of finesse characteristic of a band firing on all cylinders.
As such, the crux of the album’s issues have less to do with a lack of quality on the compositional side (although a fair amount of the latter half of the record is disappointingly one-dimensional and rigid at times), but more a suffocating lack of dynamics or space to be found within its production. Otherwise ethereal vocals are hidden behind masks of thick basslines and airy 80s synth pads, all of which compete against layers and layers of midrange-heavy reverb clumsily slapped on like a 15 year-old guitarist who just heard Only Shallow for the first time. It’s sonically and ideologically a mess, in which the band’s presumed intentions to provoke a more atmospheric and graceful mood more often than not have consequently turned oppressive, cluttered and grating through this lack of restraint. Outside of the aforementioned highlights, what would otherwise count as solid or at least serviceable filler is relegated to a level slightly above chronic ear fatigue. This is perhaps best displayed in tracks like We Never Went Away, which is plagued by the overly sharp synth keys rearing their head during the chorus that themselves drown beneath a storm of endless haze and cavernous echoes, rendering them all the more annoying due to their intangibility. In spite of these flaws, there is a great if not particularly novel album to be found here, yet it remains buried under needless technical issues that dull Time’s Arrow’s semi-sharp head.
In this sense, Ladytron’s latest effort ultimately succumbs to the same fate their 2019 self-titled comeback did, in which totally avoidable choices in production reflect poorly on a change in direction that could otherwise prove fruitful and serve to protect the band’s longevity for the foreseeable future. When the album shines brightly it does so with a warm and inviting glow - make no mistake, the good tracks here are really damn good. It just takes more effort than should be necessary to find them amongst the impenetrable waves of washed out soupiness masquerading as atmosphere.
Recommended tracks: City of Angels, Faces, Misery Remember Me, The Night.
