They had one of the biggest songs on the planet — and then they disappeared. But La Roux, the synth-pop act behind the 2009 chart-topping single “Bulletproof,” returns to the spotlight Tuesday with the release of a sophomore album, “Trouble in Paradise,” and a major revamp after a nearly three-year hiatus.
The break came from a mixture of setbacks for Elly Jackson, the 26-year-old face of the British band. Two years of nonstop touring left her burned out and physically unable to sing in her signature soprano due to residual tension in her throat.
“I still don’t quite understand,” she says. “I was so tense and anxious, basically. So it’s kind of a mixture of a physical problem and a sort of head problem, as well.”
On top of that, when it came time to work on a follow-up album, she and the other half of the duo, Ben Langmaid, couldn’t agree on the direction and decided to split.
“Obviously, it’s never as simple as just one line,” she says. “But unfortunately the best way I can describe it—without revealing things I really don’t want to go into — is creative differences. At the end of the day, I didn’t feel like I was going to be able to make the record I wanted to make, if I made it with him.”
The result is a new sound Jackson calls “warmer” and “sexier,” and it’s drawing nearly as much buzz as her iconic red bouffant. As for the fetishization of that ’do — Jackson takes it as a compliment, though she doesn’t think she looks like Tilda Swinton, as some have said.
“[But] I think [the hair] got a bit ridiculous sometimes. I see how big it got, and I’m like, Jesus Christ,” she says. “The fact that I saw other versions of it popping up in other places was always very amusing. Especially as a child, I was so f–king insecure, and so I didn’t think anyone would ever like the way I looked.”
This time around, Jackson even has a bold, new banged style.
“It didn’t fit anymore,” she says. “You know, one year you wear boot leg jeans, the next year you think, ‘Why the f–kwould anyone wear boot leg jeans?’”