Ladytron : Paradises
The Beatles in all of their incarnations lasted just 12 years, so on multiple levels it feels weird to say that their fellow Liverpudlians in Ladytron have managed to plow through this fickle music business for close to three decades. They make a new mark in the passage of time with their eighth studio album, Paradises. It loops the electronic band back to some of the sounds and influences that colored the work from the start of their career, marching there with confidence if at a slightly more deliberate pace.
Once Reuben Wu and Daniel Hunt were joined by university students Helen Marnie and Mira Aroyo to sing and play more keyboards with them, Ladytron developed an affinity for the kind of aggro, industrial-leaning blog-house that would soon soundtrack goth nights and viral social media. Their last few years and albums, including 2023’s Time’s Arrow, have featured more complex and organic arrangements. Wu left the band after Time’s Arrow, making Paradises Ladytron’s first LP as a trio.
Marnie, Arroyo, and Hunt on Paradises look backward and elsewhere to genres that rose through the 1990s. “Death in London” finds Marnie and Arroyo’s signature gasps over the kind of splashing, minor-key twists on hip-hop found in Autechre’s earliest braindance. Madchester’s raving piano stabs drive “Kingdom Undersea,” and songs like “We Wrote Our Names in the Dust” hold the tinny drums, clipped handclaps, and faux horns that wriggled up from techno’s underground.
Ladytron also manage to maintain the kind of intimacy that distanced them from the days of “He Took Her to a Movie” and 604. While there’s still a sense of detachment in their oft-dreamy lyrical delivery, we also hear tracks like “Kingdom Undersea” weaving together all three musicians’ vocal tracks for additional drama. On Paradises, their trademark languor feels much more connected to a shift in desires heard as electronica bloomed at the turn of the century, from hit club singles to album-length artistic statements. “Free, Free” and other songs across the album show Ladytron clearly cognizant how the legacies of contemporaries from Pet Shop Boys through Nightmares on Wax would bleed into the handcrafted individualism of hyperpop and bedroom electronica.
“I See Red” and “Secret Dreams of Thieves” are happy reminders of the jagged edges and smeared eyeliner found throughout Ladytron’s catalog. But Paradises should be remembered both for how it respects the band’s history and how it moves the band forward. It’s a razor of an album: smooth and sharp, clean and classy, cold and durable.
Label: Nettwerk
Year: 2026
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