La Roux & co.
It's as if the most distinctive and decadent portion of the 1980's is being re-plied and played like it was meant to be played. Minus Duran Duran and their incessant chanting of "Girls On Film" (not clever, just salacious and highly irritating).
It's as if the most distinctive and decadent portion of the 1980's is being re-plied and played like it was meant to be played. Minus Duran Duran and their incessant chanting of "Girls On Film" (not clever, just salacious and highly irritating).
Perhaps its my personal taste in music that has made me notice of the current dominance of solo-female artists who pay homage to, arguably, the decade where “POP” music was at its peak; or perhaps it’s because I appreciate how well-read and how musical-rounded and knowledgeable these ladies/gentlemen are- with a palette of influences that includes The Stones, Electric Light Orchestra, David Bowie, Prince, Queen, Madonna, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Suede, Blondie, Pretenders, Divinyls and Nico, the likes of La Roux, Lady Gaga, The Gossip, Tegan and Sarah and Ladyhawke are intelligent enough to admit that their music style is essentially derived from people who preceded them by 30-40 years.
Taking the image of silhouetted women writhing around to the opening score of a particular James Bond film, or Sharon Stone and her lack-of-panties, the alpha-androgynous of late have been as ironic as hell- Gaga’s gown red meat? No? You didn’t understand the joke? Never mind- and outrageously talented as they are outrageously offensive.
Through the evolution from token female to sole-feature; the chanteuse to the sex-symbol token front-woman to the powerhouse these women embrace all of it, and more.
Removing themselves from the terrible “faux-feminism” that seemed to pervade the 80’s- exhibit A, a movie entitled “Flashdance”, which managed to be oh-so-inspiring and empowering until it was revealed that the final dance scene was actually performed by a man in a wig.
Just like how everyone flinched when, after hours of participating in Jane Fonda’s exercise videos, found out that she was a long-term sufferer of severe bulimia, and then went “Oh shit, look what we did to this poor girl so that she’s not afraid of going to Vietnam but she’s terrified of becoming fat”.
Don’t worry, this isn’t about feminism. It’s about how fucking good and clever and bitingly furious this music is.
Far from simply simpering and appealing to a perceived, acceptable and very-vanilla range of sexual appeal, they simultaneously scare and seduce their audience into liking, wanting and listening to them incessantly.
Far from simply simpering and appealing to a perceived, acceptable and very-vanilla range of sexual appeal, they simultaneously scare and seduce their audience into liking, wanting and listening to them incessantly.
They are scary, in that A) suddenly young men are wondering why they are suddenly attracted to a chick who looks exactly like the boy they used to pick on at school, or conversely, their father looking phenomenal in drag; and B) whenever I watch Lady Gag for too long, I become overwhelmingly thankful that I was born without a pair of balls, since the likes of the good Lady could castrate a critic from fifty paces.
Let's talk about La Roux, though. The electro pop duo are an ingenious little artistic venture, alright- I say duo since, according to all reliable sources, there is actually another person involved of the outfit, though Ms. Elly Jackson and her gravity-defying quiff do compensate for another band member, anyway.
A red-haired tomboy-girl singing from the perspective of both the male and female sides of sexuality and emotionality and relationship-philosophy, driven by synthetic tunes, avant gard-ism and an ongoing French affinity- so much like the original Parisian Bohemians of the late 18th Century; think Moulin Rouge and Toulouse Lautrec and the first wave of modern cross-dressers.
Take, for instance, the video-clip of "I'm Not Your Toy". The setting itself evokes the King & I, except somehow Jackson appears to be more similar to the King of Siam instead of an English schoolteacher.
Dressed like a cross between The Thin White Duke and Michael Jackson, and dancing like Mick Jagger when he was at his most-subdued, surrounded by Grace Jones look-alikes (on that note, where on earth would these girl-boys be without the Black Woman who wore a suit and snarled in a disconcertingly articulate and intelligent voice about how she was “feeling like woman, looking like a man”), the music and its delivery manages to be so genuinely cool- not until the very end does she break out of her own stylish self-restraint and 50’s style interactions with the microphone and sets off her hilarious and intentionally pretentious audience into drink-spilling ecstasy and awkward and infectious dancing.
The music itself is layered with a little bit of delicious reverb, like a tacky mic with tape over the top of it. It's as if Jackson's voice has been divided into two- the gravelly, snarling, punk of a masculine adolescent and the electronic angel that Elly is.
I sound like an ass-kisser, but I can’t deny it, I have a crush on La Roux ever since they/she performed an electronic cover of The Rolling Stone’s “Under My Thumb”- for so long, I’ve envisaged a female artist in a tuxedo performing that song and highlighting the exaggerated machismo and subservience of girl-friends when they love a man so much that they will let him dictate what they can wear. If I was more talented and less-terrified of performing in public, I would have honestly gotten up on school assembly and sung it by now.
But more than anything, aside from ticking all of the necessary boxes for being iconic and infamous and interesting and encapsulating a certain sect of current club culture, the music of La Roux makes one want to dance like it’s 1985 and don a pair of ridiculously large shoulder pads.
PALETTE OF INFLUENCES
No comments:
Post a Comment