This came out in 2004 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Imagine, if you will, a world in which Iggy Pop and Nico had a baby girl.
Starved for the attention of her absentee parents, the little one found comfort singing to mom’s old Velvet Underground albums and playing guitar along with the late ’70s new wave discs of her daddy — until one day when, as a young woman, she stumbled across a Stereolab CD and was inspired to join the family business. If this fairy tale were a movie, that young woman could be played by Electrelane’s Verity Susman. And her sophomore album The Power Out could be its soundtrack. Husky ice-queen vocals and Francophone lyrics, simplistic beats and choppy guitars, bleeping keyboards and bubbly basslines; Susman and her bandmates compellingly combines all of these familiar influences to suit her various musical moods on these 11 songs. Even more compelling is when she borrows from other sources, setting a gospel choir to a loungey groove on one cut, setting a Spanish sonnet to shoegazing pop on another. That’s when you realize that Susman isn’t just some chip off the old rock — literally or figuratively — but very much her own woman.
