Ladytron – ‘Paradises’ album review: An ambitious return to form
Named after a Roxy Music tune with an uncanny ear for melodies that sound at once classic and ultramodern, Ladytron have perfected their distinctive brand of electronic pop music for a quarter of a century. Now, they’ve returned with their eighth studio album, Paradises, an inspiring collection.
The Skinny: Recorded across their native Liverpool, São Paulo, Montrose and London’s Dean Street Studios, and written entirely from scratch, Paradises hears Ladytron’s eccentric return to form as disco, electronica, new wave and post-punk find common ground in alluring grooves.
The album opens with ‘I Believe In You’, a declaration of devotion, “like a bulletin to heart, like the laughter in Heaven,” driven by a steady dance rhythm that soars with quiet strings behind it. The orchestral and electronica continue to merge and sustain across Paradises, as ‘In Blood’ establishes a grandiose sound of horns that flow into synthesised melodies. ‘I See Red’ holds a mirror to New Order, reminiscent of layered vocals and synths fighting for dominance of the listener’s eardrums.
‘A Death In London’, conversely, communicates a more stripped-back wave of synths but remains all the more enticing. Described by Ladytron as “the record’s soul,” the song has the mystery of a film noir, as a saxophone lurks alongside low-tempoed synths. “No faith left to perspire,” Helen Marnie sings, “no priest with whom to confess.” If this vivacity holds the heart of Paradises, then the album is founded on a provocative mystique, fitting within Ladytron’s preconceived identity.
The futuristic element that runs beneath Paradises expands, fittingly, on ‘Metaphysica’, a tune that harnesses a perfect balance of classic house and dance rhythms while imagining what the future can hold: explosive drum beats, strobe-like melodies and beyond. This energy is kept on ‘We Wrote Our Names in the Dust’, a thrash of dark synths that invokes the image of a clouded nightclub. The tune could easily fit into the hedonistic spirit that surrounded their early 2000’s breakthrough, a calling to a bygone party age.
The wide-ranging scope on Paradises becomes, at times, overwrought. At 73 minutes long, the album has its excessive moments, as songs blend into one another. While each song sounds decipherable from each other, some hold less weight than others; ‘Kingdom Undersea’, for instance, is a lovely composition, but becomes lost in itself at nearly five minutes long, rivalled by ‘Free, Free’ at just over six minutes long. To no discredit of such moments on Paradises, however, their expansiveness shows Ladytron’s sheer thrill at the act of creation, making no sacrifice to the products of such experimentation.
Paradises closes with ‘For a Life in London’, opening as a spoken-word and resulting as the first to feature all three members’ voices. “Stars realign to the contours of terrain,” they drone, sounding like they are communicating from opposite ends of the world, “Cards fall, chaos plays its hand / You learn to play piano, you go and join a band.” Ominously fading, Paradises closes with hushed fluttering synths, the final gasps of reckoning with identity as it coexists between the past and the present.
Standout Track: ‘We Wrote Our Names in the Dust’
The Verdict: On Paradises, Ladytron have produced an album that, from its inception, sought to invoke the same spirit that the band had 25 years ago. They conjure a vital dance energy communicated in an abstract, striving voice, and thus created a reminder of possibility and authenticity for a new era.
Release Date: March 20th, 2026 | Producer: Daniel Hunt/Jim Abbiss | Label: Nettwerk
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