It's pastiche, capisce?

You know that you're smack bang in the middle of a musical movement when the new talent begins to argue amongst themselves that they sound nothing alike. We've moved on from the era where everyone sounds like the Libertines and the Strokes, and now we're into the Klaxons era. I say Klaxons because they were the first ones to really bring this DIY electronic sound back from the 80s/90s, and now every good band seems to be a variant of them.

Which brings me to the latest crop of artists. Recently, Adele, Kate Nash, Lily Allen et al. have been bossing the category of female solo artists, with their sometimes witty, often spoken word lyrics and inoffensive background tones. But with the introduction of Ladhawke, the bar has not just been raised, but completely warped. The musical scene has turned full circle, with the arse end of Britpop Version 2.0 being replaced with the very soulless electropop that preceded Version 1.0. You turn on Ladyhawke, and you hear Stevie Nicks. Turn on La Roux and you get Erasure. Little Boots, a more electro Blondie. Pastiche is all well and good, but the Klaxons were great because although you got the energy and out of control feeling of early 90s rave, they actually didn't sound like anyone before them. The second wave of NuRave is witnessing pop circa 1986. But all of this is only negative in an artistic sense. The fact is, as music goes, it's great to listen to.

Take Ladyhawke's debut album; 12 perfect slices of pop with lyrical hooks that you cannot shake off. It may not be up for winning any Ivor Novello awards for "Hey, stop playing with my delirium, 'cause i'm out of my head and out of my self control", but as a chorus, it's sweeter than a nut in Tropicana, as Dizzee might suggest. This being said, you can listen to twenty minutes and have no idea how many tracks have actually been played, due to the sheer similarity of each track. Closing track Morning Dreams does hints at a real softness behind Ladyhawke's otherwise brash appearance, but it is a case of having 10 tracks at the same semi-fast tempo and then 2 ballads tacked on to the end. A lesson in how to mix it up needs to be learnt for album number two.

Lady Gaga of The Fame fame is guilty of a particularly American folly. She has created 4 stunning singles, of which Just Dance, Pokerface and Paparazzi, could quite easily make up the top 5 of the year come December, but has completely dismissed the rest of the album. To say that track 5 onwards could have been replaced better with actual horse urine in the CD case is no exaggeration. Full 16 tracks or 4 tracks and donkey piss? I'd have much preferred to have had that option in HMV. But it does not take away from the brilliance of Lady Gaga's singles as near perfection.

Little Boots' Hands offers a very similar return. The difference is that the singles, although brilliant, are not as strong as Gaga's, and the weak tracks are nowhere near as dismal. However, the confidence and competence in Little Boots' instrumentation is what is sure to elevate her above her peers. Electro Goddess wouldn't really be an overstatement of what she could achieve, with Alison Goldfrapp the obvious benchmark. Mathematics demonstrates what seems like an impossible amount of geometric puns on top of perfectly layered piano, synthesiser and big beat 80s drum machine, in what is undoubtedly the album highlight. She dabbles in the ballad and the middle of the road chug-along pop that serves as album fodder, but it is only when Victoria Hesketh really aims for the dance floor that she truly displays her potential.

The comparative early careers of these women shows a great strength in new female solo music, but each with their own shortcomings; namely of continuous pastiche (Ladyhawke), lack of quality in depth (Lady Gaga) and desperately inconsistent (Little Boots).

Enter La Roux, not entirely a solo artist (she has a silent partner) but close enough to be talked about in the same ilk as the above. The band manage to tick the boxes that are left blank by the rest of their peers. Whilst the synths have a distinctively Erasure-esque tempo and tone, there's something wholly innovative about the texture created with the high pitched, piercing nature of Elly Jackson's vocals. In for the Kill is intimidatingly seductive, illustrating the awkward feelings when lust is dangerously close to spilling into an emotional relationship. La Roux takes Gaga's simplistic assertion that (When it's love; if it isn't rough, it isn't fun), and magnifies the power struggles between boy and girl (Let's go to war to make peace, let's be cold to create heat). Clearly letting someone in was a mistake for sorry Miss Jackson (I am for real), as Bulletproof sees a hardened character develop, (I’ll never let you sweep me off my feet, I won’t let you in again). Audible sugar is the only way to describe the synths, the lyrics are perfectly weighted as to suggest the slightest chink in her armour, (Baby your time is running out) as if there is still time, and the chorus at just six words, is too simple to get out of your head. These floor filling songs though are an affront to the painfully honest heartwrencher Cover My Eyes. Okay, that may be a tad hyperbolic for a song which is about seeing a bloke you like with another girl, but it's a moment of vulnerability as she admits "I'm scared to look in your eyes, you've turned me away so many times", above a choir, which is refreshingly quiet in the background. A real moment of emotion let out on record, elevating herself above the likes of Gaga and Little Boots, who really get nowhere close to this honesty. It's not all good though, I'm Not Your Toy sees a fairly decent song ruined by what sounds like the backing tune to a shit Namco platform game circa 1994, though this is the price you pay for originality. You can either hit, or miss. The simple facts of is that La Roux have learnt from the deficiencies of their contemporaries and make sure that they hit a lot more than they miss.