Remember the spring of 2009? A new breed of female pop star stalked the land, looking like the next big thing but sounding strangely familiar. Under the banners of Ladyhawke, La Roux and Little Boots, Pip Brown, Elly Jackson and Victoria Hesketh made frothy-but-savvy electropop that briefly felt like the zeitgeist. Now, three years on, Ladyhawke's second album Anxiety is imminent, Little Boots is drip-feeding new tracks online, and La Roux is talking about adding guitars – of all the crazy things – to her repertoire. It's happening all over again.
But it's not just timing that binds this trio together. What these acts really share is a fetish for the 80s, their debuts so steeped in retro sounds and vintage synths that you half-expected them to turn up with a chap draped in metal chains.
There's nothing particularly wrong with that. Pop revivals sound fresh for a moment, a happy friction between something long unheard and an artist with a new pattern for the material. But that dab of colour soon fades and you're left with a pale rehash – unless, that is, you keep things moving. What Ladyhawke and the rest need to do is chart their heroes' careers and follow that map. Let's call it progressive revivalism.
The theory's simple. For her debut Hands, Little Boots plundered Dare-era Human League and some zippy synths from 1983's (Keep Feeling) Fascination, even exhuming Phil Oakey for a cameo. The next step is clearly to ape Hysteria, the League's brave/foolish 1984 follow-up. Hesketh needs to ship in some awkward guitars and clunky commentary on some thorny flashpoint thousands of miles away. Afghanistan will do. A few washed-out Killing Joke riffs, a tweaked lyric and it's job done.
The beauty is, it takes the creative pressure off. Album three can be a Jam and Lewis production like Crash, and album four can be a Romantic?-style reboot. Early signs in Little Boots promo tracks Every Night I Say A Prayer and Headphones suggest Hesketh is heading straight for late-80s Fingers Inc house, but that's surely where the League would have gone if they hadn't taken that hiatus.
La Roux's route looks darker. Her first album plumped for rinky-dink early Depeche Mode – an innocent pursuit on the face of it, but grim passions lurk beneath. Three years is plenty for Jackson to gain a taste for leather perv-breeks and clanking S&M pop, but she might want to pause for thought before diving headlong into smack addiction and pretending to be Trent Reznor.
Finally, the crystal ball's a little murkier for Ladyhawke who – for argument's sake – is following the Pat Benatar template. A few short years after Benatar's mid-80s Love Is A Battlefield heyday, the hits had dried up. Heaven forbid the same happens to Pip Brown.
