Hey Mum, you would have loved it
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday October 1, 2009
LA ROUXEnmore Theatre, September 29AS Elly Jackson strode on stage in a redcoat's military jacket with her hair in a striking vertical quiff €“ set, naturally, asymmetrically €“ some in the audience may well have been having some kind of flashback to decades earlier.Stage left was a tall, lightly muscular chap with a blond do the form guides might describe as from Bros out of Martin Kemp, standing to play an electronic drum kit.Centre stage and stage right were two synth players in the gold lame tops that only a Las Vegas stage mother could love. Behind them were panels of flashing lights in bright if rudimentary patterns.Add rolling keyboard bass lines, electronic sounds, loads of pre-recorded instruments and voices, two-finger synth riffs and earnest faces hunched over machinery and it couldn't be more Top of the Pops or Countdown. It couldn't be more '80s. And yes, it couldn't be more serious.So much so, that one of the real shames of a concert packed with late-teens and twentysomethings was that the audience that would have recognised the references and loved this even more, the 35- to 45-year-olds who now venture out mainly for tired revival shows, were at home watching Packed to the Rafters.Jackson (without her silent partner in La Roux, the non-performing co-writer and producer Ben Langmaid) is unobtrusively charismatic, mostly compensating for a voice that rarely ventures out of the same register and the same tone. She even charms us out of whingeing when computer breakdowns derail a couple of songs or a few of the attempts at moody atmospheres drift by dully.But the real selling points are the handful of killer electro dance tunes such as Bulletproof (Depeche Mode meets Yazoo), Quicksand (Toto Coelo out with early Bananarama), Fascination (Human League, before the girls) and In for the Kill (Eurythmics with a young Madonna on vocals) which fizz with pleasure as much as pop nous.It was done and dusted inside 45 minutes ("We've only got one album," Jackson said quite reasonably when a few grumbles were heard). It was slight but it was fun.
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald