Kevin Bronson on December 15th, 2022

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Nobody does icy cool quite like Ladytron.

Just past the 20-year anniversary of their sophomore album “Light & Magic” (cue “Seventeen,” please), the European quartet this fall announced that their seventh full-length, “Time’s Arrow,” will be out Jan. 20. The quartet — Helen Marnie, Daniel Hunt, Mira Aroyo and Reuben Wu — earned wide acclaim for their 2019 self-titled album, which marked their return after an eight-year hiatus.

Ladytron’s arty balancing act on the first three singles from “Time’s Arrow” remains nonpareil. Their songs can feel distant yet close, immersive yet aloof, industrial yet gossamer, sensual yet cerebral — motorik marvels with twin sirens Marnie and Aroyo answering the question: What if the robots are angels?

The band describes the new album as addressing the beauty, disposability and fragility of culture that surrounds us — and distancing oneself from it. “Misery Remember Me,” for instance, celebrates that. “We can try and try, but we’ll never escape who or what we are,” Marnie says. “And with that realization, we must embrace the now, but always allow ourselves to dream. ‘Misery Remember Me’ encapsulates this ethos.”

Ladytron has scheduled three West Coast dates in May, but, alas, no SoCal shows (yet).

||| Stream: “City of Angels,” “Face” and “Misery Remember Me”