Little Boots Hands Review

At the start of 2009, the tastemaking polls fairly unanimously selected Blackpool’s Victoria Hesketh a.k.a. Little Boots as the one to watch. These affairs have seldom been wrong recently, after selecting Duffy and Mika to be the sounds of their respective years, and, along with La Roux, 2009 was earmarked to be the year of ‘Women with keyboards’.

The only drawback of all this excitement was while every publication produced in the first two weeks of January was going loopy over her, there was hardly any actual music to check out. Poor Victoria may be on her fifth ‘blogosphere backlash’ – because having pop stars with great hair, fantastic garments, vision and ideas is a BAD THING apparently – which she’s no doubt losing sleep over.

Anyway, Hands is very good indeed. Imagine a sort-of Venn diagram wherein Goldfrapp’s Supernature intersects with Kylie’s Fever and Annie’s Anniemal to fashion a momentous pop creation. Fantastic moments such as Stuck On Repeat and Meddle had you wondering what Kylie’s X could’ve sounded like if Victoria chucked a couple of tunes Minogue’s way.

Produced by Greg Kurstin, the first proper single New In Town – along with its accompanying choreographed dogging video – kicks off things in style. Of the highlights, Phil Oakey popping up to duet on Symmetry is a thing that dreams are made of, and may cause riots if not released as a single at some point. The same could be said of the marvelous Remedy, or Mathematics, or Earthquake, or the aforementioned Stuck On Repeat – all amazing.

Little Boots then. Be dazzled by her wonder. Hands is a solid pop debut, the sort of album which unites lovers of pop, young and old. It sounds great whether you’re cleaning the flat or riding a fibre-glass wolf through a crystal sequin waterfall. Really you can’t wish for much more than that. Amazing.