You trap the music section between the Jonas Brothers and a pack of ravenous tweens and we reward you with a Payback Time T-shirt, two recently released major-label CDs, and two tickets to a Live Nation club show taking place in Vancouver within the next four weeks. Here’s this week’s winning whine.

Dear Payback Time: Reading John Lucas’s piece on the evolution of Ladytron was like watching a perfectly decent episode of The Wedge and then flipping halfway through to an awkward mash-up of Antiques Roadshow and the Shopping Network. After three paragraphs of knee-scraping praise for their newest “natural next step in evolution”, Lucas apparently reached the end of the Ladytron time line half an article too early and decided to fill up the leftover space with singer Helen Marnie’s Consumer Reports opinion on the advantages inherent with analogue synths. Handy tips and insights like “the old ones are better, I think” and “There’s knobs that you can turn to create warmth or whatever” are quick to convince any offhand reader that weighty, unreliable equipment is the way to go. Lucas even goes so far as to claim that we can “expect the gearheads in the audience to be crowded at the front of the stage, ogling the group’s collection of Korgs and Moogs”. Sounds about right, Lucas—we all know no one would go to a Ladytron concert for the music.

> Simon Marmorek

John Lucas responds: Dearest Simon—If no one were interested in reading about music gear, then Bass Player, Modern Drummer, Keyboard Magazine, and Contemporary Harpsichord would all be out of business. Since I’m not writing for any of those musician-oriented publications—and Nose Flute Monthly refuses to respond to my queries—I left all the gear talk in Marnie’s own words. You want the Consumer Reports version? The Korg MS2000 is a “virtual analogue” synthesizer with four-voice polyphony. It has two oscillators per voice and a resonant low-pass/high-pass/band-pass filter. It also has dual overhead cams and a cup holder. It looks shit-hot and its presence in your rig will virtually guarantee that you finally get your share of the groupie-fooping action that has so long been the domain of lead singers and middle-aged roadies with Riff Raff hairdos.

The fact is, vintage analogue synthesizers are so integral to Ladytron’s sound that the band could not exist without them. That’s what makes it relevant. As for ignoring the music itself, I guess you missed the part where I talked about the new album’s hard-edged beats and expertly layered synth lines. Perhaps you were distracted by your rampant channel-surfing. They have really good drugs for ADHD these days, you know.

Simon Marmorek carries on the nad-spankingly ignorant tradition of refusing to let us know what discs he wants. You can voice your impotent rage by snail mail or by sending an e-mail to payback@straight.com.