Elastica

So they used to rip off Blondie and Wire at the same time. Elastica don't sound the same anymore; they're a different band now. You wouldn't call Jamie Summers the same woman after Oscar Goldman made her a bionic fighting machine, would you? The band was first introduced to America in a seemingly contrived U.K. media package touting them as leaders of a scene called the New Wave of New Wave. When they lost bass player Annie Holland and then guitar-nymph Donna Matthews, singer (and founder) Justine Frischmann added friend Paul Jones on the guitar and two new keyboard players named Dave Bush and Mew. Holland recently returned, and now their sound is much less predictable. The music morphs from cold, synthesized orchestras closing in on a heartbeat to wiry, stuttered pop car crashes, then moves on to the mechanical rhythms of well-bastardized beats. The singing at first seems distant, but is actually just standoffish in a can't-be-bothered-in-my-drug-haze way. Some of the most innovative stuff to come out of the U.K. since Primal Scream's Vanishing Point.