Your reviewer’s first encounter with the rather wonderful Libelula shows the benefits of gig-going, rather than sitting around waiting on Jo Wiley or (Gawd help us) Chris Moyles to spoon-feed you the latest pop sensation. Stumbling on them as the main support for the equally splendid Spring Offensive at a lively Jericho last month was a little bit like looking for water in the desert and finding a bottle of Evian complete with ice cubes and a lemon twist.
The main driving force of the band are husband-and-wife duo Hector and Sarah Villaraus (at least I think they are : not for nothing did Sound on Sound allude to them recently as ‘The White Stripes’ of electronica!), and they are joined by Jenni Parkinson and Simon Lowry live. Actually, Parkinson’s residence in Oxford is the only (rather tenuous) permanent link with our town, but hell, we like them and who’s checking? All apart from Sarah are keys and synth players, with Hector playing Linn drums live. The latter, along with Sarah’s hoochie-coochie dancing is quite important for the live show, which would otherwise amount to the rather sterile spectacle of four people pressing buttons on computer consoles. I know this is the future of music, but a bit of warm human movement before the CPUs take over entirely is a comfort.
Anyway, to the record. It consists of four pieces of high-production-value electronic pop with the emphasis on Sarah’s Galaxy-smooth vocals, counterpointed by Hector’s futuristic word-painting, using every influence in the book. Opener ‘Golden Glow’ has one of those ultra-cool minimal Kraftwerk drum patterns, around which a squishy bass pad snakes sensuously. The lyrics, an undifferentiated hymn to Eros, are barely noticeable on paper, but Sarah’s thrilling performance, mixing the knowing impishness of Kylie (in the hands of a sympathetic producer, rather than Pete Waterman) and the sensual reach of Kate Bush, invests them with great sexual charge. Pure electro-pop Viagara, as Charles Spencer nearly said.
‘Wonderful’ isn’t quite to my taste, as it borrows too heavily from ũber-bland dub-stars Everything But the Girl, but it is produced to perfection, and would work fine on the dance floor. A high point follows with the (literally) breath-takingly lovely ‘Water’, which is ostensibly about deep-sea diving- you can almost hear the bubbles escaping from the explorer’s breathing apparatus- but may alternatively be the world’s most peaceful death-in-music.
The record ends with ‘Mountain’, an enigmatic tune which uses a trick often pulled off by Mouse on Mars: the track starts as a welter of weird squeaks and non-musical noises which slowly builds, coalescing into something rich, confident and majestic. Hector on this track is definitely the man with the plan.
So, here is yet another superb example of female-fronted electronica being heard around the city at the moment. Libelula may be significantly more commercially-minded than Misfit Mod or Dear City, but songs like ‘Water’ show that there is a warm heart beneath the intimidatingly professional veneer.