Ladytron: "Fighting In Built Up Areas"

Ladytron live in a house on the edge of a precipice, the demarcation signifying the slim gap between keyboards with drum boxes and the murky moment when ProTools and Reason emerged to make emulating this particular style of electronic music a matter of downloading the right plug-ins and selecting ‘Kraftwerk’ from a dropdown menu. No wonder, then, that most Ladytron reviews focus on vocalists Mira Aroyo and Helena Marnie, and even more often on Aroyo’s more conventional sonority. To talk about their music before their vocals seems far too problematic, living as we do in this utopia of random musical algorithm generators and hit single-picking software.

But on Witching Hour’s web-released second single, “Fighting in Built Up Areas,” it’s Marnie’s speak-sing that distinguishes the song from an album largely considered Aroyo’s shining moment. Though the backing music sounds like a beefed-up, bass-heavy update to a five-star PC game, the arrangements are looser, and the tempo faster than what fans have become accustomed to. Aroyo sticks to the background here, vamping in echo-laden “ahhs” while Marnie rhythmically pushes the songs along with her tongue, each syllable an accentuation as important as the drum machine-produced snare. And, most obviously, that Marnie sings in what sounds like another language (it is -- Bulgarian) adds an engaging if somewhat transparent depth to a band most often labeled a singles group.

“Fighting in Built Up Areas” is, more than anything else, a bridge between Witching Hour and the rest of Ladytron’s catalogue, more “He Took Her to a Movie” than “Destroy Everything You Touch.” Witching Hour is already enjoying deservedly laudatory reviews. This song is one of the less obvious reasons why.