Introducing a new column, where I have to sheepishly request a late pass for an artist, album or song that I slept on even though seemingly everyone else knew it was great.

You think I would have learned my lesson with Lily Allen that a chart-pop lead single doesn’t always indicate an album of filler behind it, and can, in fact, indicate a full album flowing with singles.

But apparently I’m jaded enough to not learn that lesson, because as much as I loved La Roux’s “Bulletproof”, I stupidly assumed that the rest of the album couldn’t be nearly as good, so I slept on it. And now I’m going to have to request…a late pass.

{BAM! Explosion! Graphics! Late Pass theme song goes here, which probably sounds a lot like the Great American Hero theme song but with a Funkadelic-style guitar solo}

Yeah, it turns out that La Roux’s entire debut album is chock full of songs as good if not better than Bulletproof. The Yaz-like synth is even colder on the rest of the record, and the choruses are just as hot.

The real gem of the album is the slinking “Tigerlily”, an impossibly great track of passionate menace. The steady build of the chorus, the perfectly sensual line “I can see you burning with desire for a kiss”, the boil over when the aching harmony line comes in…it’s one of the hottest songs I’ve heard in a long time, and even the weird middle part that’s half Vincent Price in “Thriller” and half Jarvis Cocker in “I Spy” can’t douse its fire.

La Roux, "Tigerlily" (2010)
find it on La Roux