While electronica can be divided into many sub-genres, within those sub-genres it can all start to sound the same. Ladytron might be electro-pop, and not the electro-clash they were once labeled, but the Liverpool act’s sound has largely struggled to standout in the crowded electronic crowd, single “Sugar” aside – and their latest, Gravity the Seducer, is no different.
Made up of four synthesizer players, Ladytron certainly sounds it, but largely fail to do anything really new or interesting on Gravity. They glow on openers “White Elephant” and “Mirage”; they go kind of cheesy-dark on “White Gold” and “Ace of Hz”; are awash in echoes and psych on “Altitude Blues”, “Melting Ice”, and “Ninety Degrees”. Even the ‘eighties soundtrack feel’ to anthemistic instrumental “Transparent Days” (one of three instrumentals on the album) is hardly the first eighties soundtrack revival these days. Only perhaps the higher “Ambulances” does something in a new way.
Ladytron don’t make any particular grievous errors on Gravity the Seducer; it’s just that they don’t make any particular impact at all.
