La Roux: Old Flames review – a breezy, hook-packed twist on a breakup album

(Vertigo) Devastating moments are dressed up with warm production and kinetic 00s R&B in the now quiff-less singer’s grownup fourth album

Over the six years that La Roux, AKA Elly Jackson, was making her fourth album, the singer ended a 17-year relationship, confronted her weed dependency, received autism and ADHD diagnoses and lopped off her signature Johnny Bravo-esque quiff. One might expect the resulting record to be meditative and maudlin; the opening songs Cabin Fever and Lose Myself, focused on poor mental health and addiction respectively, suggest it will be fraught and claustrophobic. The former’s suffocating bass and unsteady synths segue into the latter’s unnerving nursery rhyme-like verses and thrashing chorus, reminiscent of the crunchier elements of HIStory-era Michael Jackson.