"Cruel Sexuality.""Kiss and Not Tell.""Sexotheque." The songs on La Roux's long-awaited, fantastic sophomore album "Trouble in Paradise" clearly seem lusty. But Elly Jackson, the singer and primary force behind the English dance-pop outfit, emphasizes that it's the music that's sexual, not necessarily the lyrics.
"It's not that the songs are about sex," the 26-year-old Jackson says by phone. "It's that the music evokes grooves that I find personally to me, in my opinion, to be sexual. And to have a sexual vibe about them. It's not about the act of having sex; it's about feeling sexual, if that makes sense."
It certainly does. If your hips don't thrust to the bassline of "Silent Partner" (to name just one example), consult your doctor immediately.
Released in July (more than five years after La Roux's self-titled debut, featuring the ubiquitous "Bulletproof"), the warm, irresistible "Trouble in Paradise" easily is one of the year's best albums. It recalls the way Japandroids' second record ("Celebration Rock") so elevated the group's output that it rendered its very, very good predecessor nearly obsolete. Jackson says the next album won't take nearly as long-Google the personal and professional issues that caused the delays-and that much of her recent material, now performed with a full band, has multiple hooks happening at once. She's right.
In reference to the years it took to deliver the album, you've said, "I suppose I've never really been one of those people who's quick at anything." How else has that impacted you? Are you someone who takes an hour to make toast?
Yeah, I am. If I make a sandwich, it will take me, like, half an hour because I'll be really weird about what order everything goes in. Yeah, everything I do, pretty much, I'll be quite pedantic about it.
How do you adjust the order of making a sandwich to make it take that long?
I don't know. It's [more] taking my time over things. I think making a sandwich is like the most simplest thing that you can do. If you can't make a sandwich, there's something wrong with you. And I think it's really weird that you can go into a sandwich shop for instance and you can buy a sandwich and that's what their job is, to sell you a sandwich, and it won't have any butter in it and it'll be made really badly. And I'll just think, "This is your business, and you can't even do it." And I think everything I do, everything, even if it's down to making a sandwich, I'll try and make the best sandwich I've ever made every single time I make it. And if I don't make it right, l will throw it away and I will start again.
I hope this doesn't come out the wrong way, but now I would really love for you to make me a sandwich.
[Laughs.] Yes, you would like me to make you a sandwich. It would be amazing.
As your music has grown and changed, how do you feel your live show has developed with it?
I guess obviously it's become a lot more live. We don't have anywhere near as much just solid electronic stuff going on. I've even started playing guitar and bass now as well. I think [also] with this record, throughout making it, it was obvious I was going to have to change things up [live] or it wouldn't work. ... There wasn't really a great deal that we could do with [the first record], at least with the setup that we had because we just had two keyboard players and electronic drums It kind of meant that we were all a bit stuck, and by the end of the first tour we were all kind of struggling a little bit and wanted to be able to do more. We didn't feel challenged enough, basically, by the live show. I wanted to make a record that meant that we could do more, and we all wanted to be able to do more. And this record's really let us do that. We're trying to set ourselves new challenges every week now.
What impact do you see the sexuality of the songs having on crowds?
It's nice. We've noticed that there's certain people, not like before, who really start getting down and getting into their own groove, their own pocket of dancing and creating a little space around them and really, really dancing. Which never really happened on the first record in the same way. People jumped up and down or they kind of moved backwards and forwards, but no one really got into their whole own groove and their whole own space. It happens quite a lot. You see people latching onto grooves to songs like "Cruel Sexuality" and "Tropical Chancer" and "Sexotheque," and then the whole crowd starts moving in a way that flows rather than [something] slightly aggressive. Electronic [music], it's just harder to dance to that, whereas this lends itself so much better to that, and you can see that in the crowd.
EXTRA: READ MATT'S 4-STAR REVIEW OF 'TROUBLE IN PARADISE'
Have you thought about or spoken to any other artists who had a lot of success on their first album and made a change on the second one while being aware of how they were being perceived?
Yeah, I've thought about it. It happens to artists all the time, especially when you [take a long time to make an album] it's bound to happen. Even when I made the first record, I always knew that not all of my music would always be like that. I think deep down I knew I wasn't going to like the same music forever. I think that's very difficult to do. It's weird; it doesn't just work that way negatively. It can work the other way negatively as well. There are bands that have made kind of the same sounding record [after being successful] with that first record and then kind of done the same sound again, and their record's not been received particularly well. So I think it can part both ways.
I think if you change you can go through a slightly difficult transitional period where you need to make yourself understood as an artist, which I knew would happen and that's fine and I'm glad that it's happening. And then you can have it the other way as well. If I had made a record like the first record, people would have gone, "This is really boring" or "This is very 2009, and I'm done with it." Then you're dead in the water. You're kind of [bleeped] if you do and [bleeped] if you don't in a way. But I feel it's better off this way. At least now I can progress and grow in my own space in my own time, and either people will come along with me or they won't.
Thanks for your time, Elly. Hopefully we can share sandwiches at some point.
Yeah, hopefully. Any time I see you I'll make you a sandwich, I promise.
La Roux, 7 p.m. Wed. at Concord Music Hall. $28.
Plus:
On Chicago:"When we've been there unfortunately we've only ever had the day of the show to go around. I remember once before we went to a massive fancy dress shop and spent quite a long time in there, but that's kind of my only memory at the moment, which is why it would be nice to go back and reacquaint myself with the city."
Why she won't tell me a joke: "I only know really inappropriate jokes, and I'm not telling any of them. [Laughs] If we were with each other and it was off the record I would, but I'm definitely not doing that. I'll get hate mail. I only remember the really bad ones. I can't remember the silly ones. I only remember the really awful ones. They stick with me because they're awful. I'm not repeating them. [Laughs]"
Watch Matt review the week's big new movies Fridays at 11:30 a.m. on NBC.
mpais@tribune.com
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