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La Roux Trouble In Paradise album review: "Wall-to-wall bangers"

Released on Wednesday, Jul 2 2014

La Roux announce new album Trouble In Paris
Waiting For Elly Jackson: it's become a running gag to rival anything Samuel Beckett could have conjured. For the past five years time has been tricking by and, just like the elusive Godot, it's not brought a new La Roux album with it. And at some point, in that half-decade of missed deadlines and delayed releases, the question's ceased being 'when' - it's become 'how' instead. How could this LP, fast approaching Chinese Democracy levels in terms of tardiness, justify the never-ending wait? How would La Roux, after coming on like the freshest mainstream pop act in yonks back in 2009, fit into the fabric of 2014? Pop's a fickle mistress, and if you're not leading the charge, you're straggling at the back of the pack instead.

And yet for all the trials and tribulations - including the split with musical partner Ben Langmaid - Trouble In Paradise is an utter triumph: an album of wall-to-wall bangers which makes a mockery of the idea that all those long chewed-over ideas would sound old-hat upon release. Case in point, opener 'Uptight Downtown' is inspired by the London riots that lit up Brixton back in 2011 - a topic which, by now, should sound cloyingly passé - and yet here it's electro-pop magic, with its shimmering, Chic-like guitars and taut backdrop.

Whereas La Roux was a tinny, hard-edged listen at times - compressed and condensed, synths fizzing into one another and Jackson's shrill pierce of a vocal - Trouble In Paradise is warm, immersive and made from a much broader sonic palette. 'Kiss And Not Tell', for example, is Blondie's NYC disco taken down a Brixton back alley, a tale of relationship strife with bubbling synths and cascading, tropical riffs. It's a winning sound, but there's no sense of sticking rigidly to formula here: 'Cruel Sexuality' is another treatise on the same squabbling of couples but is spikier and sparser, built on a chugging bass and spacey, sci-fi squiggles of sound and a washed-out guitar. Some lesser mortals cling steadfastly to one formula; La Roux has more great ideas in just one album - nay, in just one song - than nearly all of them.

'Tropical Chancer' is the most cheeky and charming of the lot, perhaps - and certainly the most immediately catchy - with its sun-kissed swagger and calypso-like bounce a near-perfect echo of the scallywag taken to task in the lyrics, but it's hardly the only gem. 'Sexotecqhue' is a sordid take on a man who can't stop going to seedy dens of inequity ("He wants to go where the red light shines so bright"), and yet there's no hand-wringing or condemnation or woe-is-me moping; as with most of the love-on-the-rocks tracks here, Jackson's got tongue firmly-in-cheek, using the story of a sleaze addict as fodder for a romping sing-along chorus.

And the sense of saucy fun means that when things do get more serious, it pricks all the more painfully: 'Let Me Down Gently' is gorgeous slow-burn heartbreak with woozy synths that blossoms two-and-a-half minutes in into dark disco a la Pet Shop Boys as Jackson sings: "Turn me into someone good/ That's what I really need," lost and alone with only the glare of the mirrorball for company.

Elsewhere, the seven-minute chug of 'Silent Partner' journeys on a filthy synth that's the grubby cousin of Donna Summer's 'I Feel Love', 'Paradise Is You' has enough moon-eyed holiday longing for the slushiest of beach novels and 'The Feeling' is perfect staccato pop. La Roux may have kept us all dangling on for five years for a second album, but sometimes the old clichés ring true: good things - very, very good things - do come to those who wait.

Tracks to download: 'Tropical Chancer', 'Let Me Down Gently', 'Sexotecqhue'

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