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LOVE La Roux

Caught an ASTONISHINGLY good gig of theirs last night

So, we swung by the Scala in King Cross last night to catch one of La Roux’s few headlining gigs of the year, with eyebrows raised in dubious expectation.

Given the band’s love it or hate it 80s sound, rumours of front woman Elly Jackson being a moody so-and-so and some questionable televised live performances, we had mixed expectations to say the least.

But after catching the ‘red-haired one’ and her other (even more mysterious) band mates last night, we’re now completely fixated - despite a few debates about the possible presence of an Auto-Tune giving Elly a helping hand...

Yes, we’re happy to report that we were completely blown away by the youthful energy and ‘box freshness’ (does that line work? If not, blame Dannii Minogue – we’ve nicked it from an episode of last year’s X Factor) of the entire set, which included almost every song off the excellent, Mercury Award-nominated debut album.

It was a truly brilliant gig. But shameful as it is to admit: we’re still not sure how many people are actually in this band besides Elly – maybe that’s part of the appeal. But we’re certain that there were four people on stage last night, including a rather handsome drummer, who played his instrument STANDING, while DANCING - amazing!

We were sold immediately by the gig’s opener - an absolutely blistering version of the punchy Tiger Lily, which was elevated further by a blinding light display. Initially Elly seemed to live up to her fierce reputation as she skulked around the stage like a venomous snake (a predictable simile, yes, but it’s all that truly fits), literally spitting out plosive lyrics like “our communication is telepathy,” with a fittingly sour facial expression.

Tiger Lily was the high point of the set; a genuine ‘pinch yourself’ pop music moment. It was as if the band had literally climbed on to the stage straight out of their album cover, or from a television set (remember that scene from The Ring?) playing one of their videos – presenting a perfect, almost subhuman musical product.

Epitomised, of course, by Elly's almost-unnervingly gravity-defying quiff (why does it never look that good when we do it??). She looked good - as androgynous in the flesh as she is on screen (but with one of the most feminine voices we've ever heard), but still pretty and with a great dress sense.

And despite all this, is it was equally interesting to observe as Elly and the others slowly discarded this rigid pretence as the gig wore on and the reception they garnered from the excited crowd became increasingly more positive. Audience interaction was rare, but when it did happen it was, for want of a better word, rather cute.

For instance, when Elly muttered something indecipherable in to the microphone between songs with enough visible ambiguity that what she said could have been a mass insult, it was thus genuinely pleasing to see a huge smile break out on her face and hear the cheers, as the penny dropped throughout the crowd that what she’d actually said was something generically innocent like: “Feel free to song along to this one!” Phew, long sentence that one...

The gig climaxed with In For The Kill, which actually set a couple of people off like fireworks (especially the gays – stop whipping your necks from side to side like some windup toy, people, or you’ll break them). And the initial five-second opening of that track - in a live format, featuring some razor sharp synthesiser mastery - well, that was all but awe-inspiring.