Irreverent and polished,
Ludo continue to deliver their brand of slick power pop meets post-hardcore on their fourth album,
Prepare the Preparations. With a lighthearted obsession with pop culture, robots, and skeletons, Volpe and company deliver their usual collection of confidently offbeat rock with songs like “Whipped Cream” showing off the band's quirky,
Weezer-esque side. The band also takes its sound in some unexpected directions, like the ironically indulgent "Cyborgs vs. Robots," which plays like the driving theme song to an '80s action movie, complete with modulated robot vocals and hair metal wails. On “Skeletons on Parade,”
Ludo show off their theatrical side, which mixes equal parts sea shanty and cabaret into a macabre singalong. While these excursions don’t always work, it’s good to see not only that
Ludo’s sense of humor is still intact, but that the band isn’t content to do the same old thing album after album. All in all,
Prepare the Preparations shows that
Ludo are the lovable, lovelorn, and weird band that they’ve always been, but with a few twists and turns that should surprise fans who have been with the band from the beginning. ~ Gregory Heaney