Six years is, of course, more than pushing it when it comes to a musical artist waiting to release a new record. But, in Elly Jackson a.k.a. La Roux’s case, one can forgive almost any wait for the sake of a product that is always pure electropop brilliance. Plus, with the departure of one of her original collaborators under the “La Roux imprint,” Ben Langmaid, there was surely a fair amount of “growing pains” (also a song title on La Roux) for Jackson as she sought to write lyrics and music for a third album. That album being Supervision, a taut eight-track declaration of love, pratfalls and all. In between the ebb and flow of her effusion, there are manifesto type tracks like “21st Century” and wanderlusting bops like “International Woman of Leisure.” It is the former track that commences Supervision, somewhat ironic considering how sonically tied to a certain part of the twentieth century La Roux’s output is.
Commenting on an epoch filled with emptiness and lack of meaning, La Roux chirps to an upbeat rhythm, “Oh, thanks for playing keeper, but I don’t need a 9 to 5/Oh when you found the diamonds, all your tears were still inside/Oh, when we find the money, all our dreams become untrue…/Oh, when you get the money, oh, will you get the mind?/All the innocence is burning, can you feel a better time?” Most definitely. And it ain’t this one. Void as we all are of emotions in this period, La Roux seems to tongue-in-cheekly title the following song “Do You Feel.” The answer, for most, is likely: not really. Still, La Roux feels obliged to demand, among other questions, “Do you feel like you believed in something, and you never even questioned why?/Do you feel like you’ve forgotten something?/Do you feel like you’ve been locked inside?” Considering the complacency the internet is designed to make us (not) feel and the fear-mongering news items about the coronavirus, it’s only natural to lose track of just how many hours we while away locked inside during the twenty-first century.
Which is why the subsequent song and third single, “Automatic Driver,” offers yet another ironical tinge with regard to speaking of movement, albeit on a more literal level in the video: in a golf car. Yet there is a decidedly static feel to the longing and frustration presented in the song, with La Roux lamenting, “Too many times we’ve been high/Then we’ve landed/Oh, that smile that you hide leaves me stranded/Oh, sometimes I feel like we’re just pretending/And this time I realize/It’s an ending, an ending.” In many ways, it almost seems like a subconscious acknowledgement of Langmaid’s departure. As one of the most standout offerings on the record, it is given further one-two punch cachet with its placement alongside “International Woman of Leisure” (which is perhaps a moniker some of us can only aspire to while La Roux appeared to be living it out during this six-year hiatus). Harboring a certain Marina as Electra Heart quality due to being told from the perspective of a character–a transitory Atomic Blonde-like spy–La Roux taunts, “No, I never want to see your face again/No, I never want to hear your call/I will not be living in that space again/I will not come knocking at your door/’Cause I’m an international woman of leisure/Oh, you want me to go? Oh, it’s my pleasure/And now I can feel the change in the weather.”
That change in the weather being to the more slowed down, sex-drenched–think George Michael’s “Freedom ‘90” (and, indeed, La Roux also borrows heavily from Georgie and Wham! on Supervision)–“Everything I Live For.” Incidentally, track five on her sophomore effort, Trouble in Paradise, is also sex-drenched, what with being titled “Sexotheque” and all. Except, in the case of “Everything I Live For,” the frenetic, moody rhythm as opposed to the lyrics is what lends it a carnally desperate quality. As though a continuation of the spy persona presented on “I.W.O.L.,” La Roux expresses, “Oh, lately there’s something in the atmosphere/Telling me things that I don’t wanna hear/Taking me places I don’t wanna be/Showing me things that I don’t wanna see.” If she didn’t have short hair already, these would be the type of sentiments that would make her rife for an impromptu drastic haircut (maybe she could settle for a head-shaving à la Britney).
Persisting with a sweltering moodiness, “Otherside” provides yet another tale of love seemingly from the perspective of someone either with a secret to hide or pursuing someone with such a similar penchant for information-concealing. And, as most are aware, “Secrets secrets are no fun, secrets secrets hurt someone.” Which is very likely why La Roux expresses from a place of agony, “I don’t wanna chase something that’s wrong, so just let it be known/Even when I’m switched off the yearning carries on/And I don’t wanna feel anything for anyone anymore.” In the twenty-first century, that’s pretty easy to do, but alas, La Roux suffers from the inherent overemotionalism of someone being born a Pisces–possibly the only zodiac sign capable of saving the earth from near total robot domination. This, of course, can be the only explanation for a song as jovially bathetic (yet it works when La Roux executes it) as “He Rides,” a surprisingly heteronormative love anthem that declares, “We’re on a mission, keep it on the line/With you, this mountain’s easier to climb/When we’re together, happiness delight.” Yes, it very much smacks of something that could only have been produced seriously in the 80s.
At the same time, La Roux is no “Gullible Fool” (the final song on the album), well-aware that the genre of music she’s consistently released is something requiring the adroitness of wielding pastiche in order to be made her own embraced form of music. For, certainly, not everyone would be able to get away with the maudlinness of lyrics such as, “Just pack your things and go/Honey, don’t pretend you didn’t know/Oh now, don’t you say you miss me, I’ve been up for sale all week.” Basically just La Roux and George Michael. With cover artwork that features La Roux looking like one of the lost members of Duran Duran, the aesthetic more than matches the 80s-friendly groove she established long ago in 2009 with her eponymous debut (featuring the hits, “In for the Kill” and “Bulletproof”). And while Supervision is a more than consummate addition to her canon, there can be no denying that, with the six-year gap, some of the momentum has been lost, for La Roux and Trouble in Paradise still far outshine this troisième release.
