With Light And Magic, Ladytron stepped across the bridge between Indie and Electro, stopping to pick up traces of SynthGoth along the way. Their sophomore release spawned such hits as "Blue Jeans" and the Depeche Mode-referencing "Seventeen" (as well as a haircut featured all over Livejournal's "Hot Fashion" community), and the members of Ladytron return a year later with Softcore Jukebox. Presented as a collection of favorite songs from the group, the initial misconception will be for many that these tracks are actually mixed, which will find you standing in wonder, scratching your head at how the hell some of these songs actually lead into each other. Thing is, they don't. Reflecting the current trend in Indie DJing, this isn't a mix in the Dance music sense but a mix in the tape-trading sense: Ladytron's like that kid that sat behind you in school, reminiscent of Jordan Catalano from "My So Called Life", and they've brought you a musical primer on how to be cool. This "Jukebox" is filled with songs that, regardless of their age or style, fill in the dotted lines that trace through the current mingling of Indie, Electro and Glitterpunk. Opening with My Bloody Valentine's classic Noisedance "Soon" (providing stronger support for the forthcoming MBV resurgence coming to music near you next year), Ladytron's selections go through names new and old and create a new way of weaving through the most prevalent sound the radio isn't playing. The Fall's fantastically obscure "Hit The North", Codec and Flexor's tragically overlooked stomper "Crazy Girls", and !!!'s pre-"Guiliani" "Feel Good Hit Of The Fall" all find a place alongside Electro sing-alongs like Cristina's Larry Tee-sounding "Cristina" ("my sheets are stained/so is my brain/what's a girl to do" is the best line that W.I.T. never sang) and a remix of "Blue Jeans". The inclusion of Wire's "The 15th" is appreciated if only to show the new scenesters on the block where Fischerspooner got the song from-it wasn't always a soundtrack to Casey Spooner in a glittery thong. The collection slips, however, when Ladytron stumble into a punked-up cover of Tweet's "Oops Oh My". The massive attention Tiga's cover of Nelly's "Hot In Herre" has gotten brings the "Electro Covers Pop-Hop" notion uncomfortably close to played out, and this doesn't help. For what it's worth, though, their version is a hell of a lot of fun, and has probably the biggest sneer anything penned by Missy Elliot and Timbaland will ever get. Like all good mix tapes, Softcore Jukebox closes with an unexpected flourish: the Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazlewood duet "Some Velvet Morning". One could only hope this is an indication of how the upcoming Ladytron DJ sets will fair, because Nancy Sinatra has the perfect voice for stumbling bleary eyed from a club at five in the morning. In all, while the lack of mixing may be disappointing, the tracks rarely miss. To borrow from Hansel in the Ben Stiller film 'Zoolander", "Listen to your friends Ladytron. They're cool kids. They're trying to help you out.." Rank: Four out of five biscuits