On March 20, Ladytron’s eighth album, ‘Paradises’, is released. A work that reunites the Liverpool trio made up of Helen, Mira and Daniel with Nettwerk, the label that released ‘Velocifero’ (2008) and ‘Gravity the Seducer’ (2011).
A work that “overflows with color,” ‘Paradises’ shows Ladytron “in her most stylized, romantic, urgent and psychic version.” According to the press release, the album builds “a luminous collage of technological primitivism, high priestess disco music, spectral soul and Balearic noir,” imagining a kind of “beach at the end of the world full of dreams and invocations.”
But to the point: are the songs good? The answer is yes, and quite a bit. We could talk about the glam piano of ‘Kingdom Underseas’, the intriguing sci-fi atmosphere of ‘I Believe in You’ or the Italian disco of ‘I See Red’, but today we’re left with the latest single, ‘Caught in the Blink of an Eye’.
In ‘Caught in the Blink of an Eye’, this Sunday’s Song of the Day, Ladytron reflects on the transience of life, an idea elegantly captured in the phrase “daylight fades across the arcade”, which captures the image of a city that transitions from day to night. Ladytron describes its inhabitants as “ghostwriters of their lives”, that is, “writers in the shadow of their own lives”, as if they existed outside of their own planning.
The idea of being “stuck in the blink of an eye” suggests that life is a transition, that people and moments last very little and that existence is intermittent. Appropriately, the music of ‘Caught in the Blink of an Eye’ uses icy electro that matches another of the lyric’s notable phrases, which directly appeals to death or petrification: “Say goodbye and return to stone.” We die and become an inert body again.
In contrast to its thematic depth, ‘Caught in the Blink of an Eye’ is a song that doesn’t overcomplicate melody and production. The theme is “jack, horse and king” in structure and execution and in the chorus it uses a repetition that is as obvious as it is effective. This apparent lack of pretension gives ‘Caught in the Blink of an Eye’ a remarkable freshness. If in 2021 they managed to make ‘Seventeen’ viral on TikTok, ‘Caught in the Blink of an Eye’ could well be a worthy successor.
