La Roux turns to 90s R&B on a fourth album shaped by the end of a 17-year relationship, finding room for new beginnings beneath its layered production.
In her fourth album, Old Flames, early 2010s pop stalwart La Roux is setting down her baggage. Discarding the clean electro-pop sound and aesthetics (shoulder pads, big quiff) that made her name, a newly dressed-down La Roux (real name Elly Jackson) finds the inspiration for Old Flames a decade later - in the likes of All Saints, Michael Jackson, TLC and Mariah Carey.
The album is mushier than usual La Roux fare, velvety in its layering.
She sets down too the 80s New Romantic influences that provided the architecture and inspiration for her previous three albums - her eponymous debut La Roux (2009), which won her a Grammy at only 20 - Trouble in Paradise (2014) through to Supervision (2020). Her new 90s and early 00s R&B palette is immediately audible in the album’s languid first track, an immersive intro which pulls the listener into the artist’s beloved second-hand Jeep, windscreen wipers clicking rhythmically as rain batters the roof and La Roux’s new sound begins to fade in on the stereo.
The cosy, nostalgic feel that continues through the 90s tones of the album belies the rupture that was the album’s genesis - the end of a 17-year relationship, one Jackson had previously kept away from the public’s prying eyes. Keeping her sexuality and long-term partner under wraps created a conflict for Jackson’s storytelling - ‘nearly every song I wrote was about her, some way’, she reflects, but she could never be truly open in her lyrical content. Old Flames is a departure from this privacy, the first record La Roux has written using she/her pronouns for the romantic personas in her songs. As powerful as the loss of her long-term partner has been, Jackson’s music benefits from its newfound honesty.
There’s no doubting that this is a new sonic era for the artist most well known for singles ‘In for the Kill’ and ‘Bulletproof’ in the early 2010s. It’s not always an easy listen - ‘Cabin Fever’ and ‘Lose Myself’, the album’s first two full-length tracks, have choruses that harness Jackson’s unique vocal register to pull the listener into moments of frenetic struggle. Treating in turn self-imposed isolation and then addiction, the two tracks are repetitive, spasmodic - you can feel Jackson’s melodies trying to break out from within their confines. After this initial test, the album settles into gentler, richer tones.
The message of the piece is simple - ‘old flames / burn out’, the first lyrics Jackson wrote in her Brixton flat - the old must make way for the new. ‘I’m here to rise like a phoenix’, she sings on ‘Babyline’, the most hopeful track on the album. The rain of the album’s first half has cleared, and lighter sounds conjure the gleam of sunshine on wet pavements; a new beginning.
Jackson wrote the album to be replayed, rewarding re-listeners with new layers, both sonic and semantic. I do find this to be true - on first listen the depth of the album is not immediately obvious; it risks fading into the background. Once I’ve let it all swirl round a few times, the really great bits of the album start to show through - the synthed-up chimes of ‘Falling’ recall Annie Lennox, ‘I Just Keep Crying’ is a catchy, soulful song that feels bigger than its status as a brief chapter in the story. ‘Your Lover’ and ‘Night Vision’ (an homage to Mariah Carey’s ‘Heartbreaker’) are soft and sexy, quietly confident. Jackson was particularly interested in interpreting the nineties because it was the last time, pre-internet, smartphones, and social media, ‘that the world wasn’t really fucking scary.’
But despite Jackson’s selection of motifs from hip-hop’s heroines - she specifically references the interludes of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill as a method she wanted to imitate for creating ‘situational landscapes’ - Old Flames ultimately lacks the lyrical depth to go head to head with such iconic inspirations. The heavy production and repetitiveness make the actual story quite hard to get to, requiring fairly labour-intensive excavation. Where her lyrics do stand out, it’s in their strangeness: ‘be careful what you spread around making my toast’ (‘Cabin Fever’) is one that tripped me up with each play-through. For an album focused on dropping the act, letting people in, it’s quite opaque and tends more often towards lyrical cliché than something that feels really new.
For sure, by the final act, the album succeeds in its project to be ‘joyous and immersive’. It succeeds in its other mission too, of showcasing Jackson’s skills as a producer and composer - she’s quietly worked with Tyler, the Creator, Casisdead, and Skrillex, and is keen for this bolder, more transparent piece to make known the full gamut of her musical skillset. Like with many female artists, it’s all too easy for her work with these big male names to be overlooked, something Jackson wants to change. In all, Old Flames is a good listen - I imagine it would do well on a long drive. It is a departure in many senses that will surprise fans and critics alike, a confident work long in the making that pulls back the curtain on a fresh, new La Roux.