The adage that nostalgia comes in twenty-year cycles may be an old marketers’ tale, but sneak a superficial glance at über-stylish Liverpool synth-poppers Ladytron and you’d be forgiven for taking it as fact. As leading lights of the 2000s British club scene, they were branded 80s revivalists and lumped in with the contemporary electroclash movement, a label which they always disavowed. Now, in 2026, ‘electroclash’ has been swallowed up by the baffling retronym ‘indie sleaze’ and is itself the stuff of remembered youth.
The irony of all this is that Ladytron, like so many electronic musicians, have always looked to the future. “Our sound is never reactionary to outside elements,’ said vocalist Helen Marnie in a 2011 interview, ‘it’s always natural and down to experiences.” Still, with the weight of two sets of nostalgia on its shoulders, their eighth studio album Paradises brings with it both a built-in audience and built-in preconceptions.
Opener ‘I Believe in You’ makes one thing clear; Ladytron aren’t interested in reminding you of the past when they can use their considerable powers to make you dance instead. Its thumping beat is joined by clunky, funky techno-percussion (something we’ll be hearing a lot of) until the whole thing is clacking and pulsing like a mechanical device decked out in disco lights.
Indeed, the press release argues that Paradises is ‘Ladytron’s most dance-oriented record since Light & Magic’. But should you be longing for the moody robo-goths of 2005 smash ‘Destroy Everything You Touch’, then know that they’re still here; they’ve just changed a little. Though ‘I See Red’ is as upbeat as anything else on the album, Helen Marnie and Mira Aroyo’s vocals purr darkly over a backing which throbs and spirals until you can’t tell up from down.
‘A Death in London’ matches its title’s pulpy Victoriana with sinister string sounds and silky sax solos, its Fairlight CMI samples conjuring the kind of unsettlingly kitsch atmosphere which was the Art of Noise’s bread and butter. The feathery Bond-theme murmur of ‘Ordinary Love’ is more reserved, but every bit as entrancing.
Still, Ladytron’s hooks are every bit as addictive as their rhythms, proving that they haven’t lost their knack for perfect pop. ‘Kingdom Undersea’ motors along on repeating Scissor Sisters-style piano until it wires itself into your bones, while the land-of-make-believe lyrics blur the lines between the fantasies of childhood and the aspirations of adulthood. The euphoric, luxurious house beat of ‘Sing’ glows with an even stronger sense of adventure, all sparkling production radiating in a foamy disco Catherine wheel around vocals which recall Kylie or Madonna.
And, although successfully shunning pastiche, they still show themselves capable of pulling influence from their New Romantic forbears to brilliant effect. The deliberate, velvety, almost neoclassical synth ostinato which pulses in the centre of ‘Metaphysica’ brings to mind Visage’s classic ‘Fade to Grey’, lent new life and urgency by the chattering mass of synthesised voices, pert handclaps, pounding electronic drums, and sonic-screwdriver sweeps which surround it. To accuse music like this of style over substance is to miss the point. The style and the substance are one and the same, and ‘Metaphysica’ is substantial indeed.
Even when the pace slows, every song on Paradises is rich with the promise of escape through music and lyrics alike. ‘In Blood’ sees Aroyo and Marnie’s co-lead vocals soaring in formation over the top of stately whirrs and clatters and a woody-sounding staccato melody, adding up to a sound which sprawls like a magnificent landscape viewed from a mountain peak.
‘Evergreen’ takes a blockier shape as its bright solid rhythms clack along cheerfully. With higher, thinner synths keening around them and dream-sequence harps sweetening the whole thing further, you could imagine the result gracing an early 80s episode of Top of the Pops – a door into Wonderland sandwiched rudely between ‘Stop the Cavalry’ and ‘There’s No One Quite Like Grandma’.
The harp gets another outing on ‘We Wrote Our Names in the Dust’, beaming striped shafts of light into the prowling ravey drums and Vox Humana-ish tones of its dark sci-fi setting. In keeping with the album title, each song on Paradises manages to build a new world within its synthesised bounds, evoking everything from tropical islands to sleek spaceships to long-lost cobbled city streets. It’s no wonder, then, that a record of such soaring imagination should so often take on a sense of childlike joy to match.
The unusually light vocals on ‘Secret Dreams of Thieves’ sound out syllables like a Speak & Spell, and between the song’s energetic electro beats and thickly swirling synths, the thrilling end result practically jostles you onto the dancefloor. Although trotting along at a steadier pace and laced with an undertone of slinky menace, the primary-colour pop grooves of ‘Free, Free’ are just as hopeful as the empowering lyrics.
Possibly the most enchanting song on the whole album is the mesmeric Shakespeare-at-the-disco sad-banger ‘Caught in the Blink of an Eye’, which sees the band momentarily dropping their escapist outlook to reflect on mortality. ‘We appear, and we disappear,’ the vocals sigh, and such a sentiment only strengthens the music’s euphoric, unifying power.
On the final two tracks, Ladytron choose to leave us with this spirit of optimism and celebration. The emulated strings and bells of ‘Solid Light’ may be entirely computerised, but they ring and chime with a tactile sense of wonder. Reaching for the sun from its first note, the song only goes up from there until it hits an ecstatic fake-out ending which could well make it the perfect concert closer. Then at last, ‘For a Life in London’ guides us gently back down to earth, folding just about every texture we’ve encountered on the record behind a spoken-word reminiscence and wrapping it all up in another ribboning sax solo.
‘You learn to play piano, you go and join a band,’ they mutter in deadpan tones before the hungry yowl of something like a harmonica kicks in. Their career may have been going on for twenty-seven years now, but it seems appropriate that only on this final track do Ladytron sound like weary veterans of the music scene rather than still-youthful explorers. They know that the power of pop music to transport and transform can reach ahead as well as behind, and whether your heart belongs to the 1980s, the 2000s, the here and now, or the years ahead, Paradises is an aurorally bright aural delight to leave you looking at the world anew.
Paradises is out Friday 20th March via Nettwerk – order here
Ladytron are currently on tour – buy tickets here:
March 20th – Digital, Newcastle
March 21st – Gorilla, Manchester
Ladytron socials:
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Review by Poppy Bristow
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