Little Boots – Hands (album)

This is probably the first album I’ve bought in the week of release! Couldn’t find it in HMV for some reason so I had to go to WHSmiths (I should have used my HMV gift card from Carine and Kevin on the Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix album, but I’m going to have a preview gander first). Much hyped but with a disappointing performance from the lead single New In Town, the debut album Hands from Little Boots nevertheless comes with big expectations.

Overall I love the album. I will probably play it to death. I had heard three of the tracks before, although in different mixes. New In Town is a solid opener, but as many people have opined perhaps a bit misleading as to the tone of the album (much like Girls Aloud’s The Promise). Stuck On Repeat (previously a free iTunes track) rather cunningly repeats the verse and chorus with exactly the same words, so it’s just as well they’re a fantastic verse and chorus. Meddle is completely different from the Tenori-On mix on a previous EP but none the worse for it – the extra production means Little Boots’ voice sits a bit lower in the mix and consequently the song is even more melancholic (common to the rest of the album,  I think).

Of the tracks new to me, the best are Earthquake and Mathematics in my opinion, the former quite perky in comparision with the other songs but with a sinister, masochistic edge to the lyrics, and the latter taking the ‘maths’ metaphor quite far. In fact quite a few of the songs are metaphors going almost too far. I thought my statistics-based song Error was bad enough, but here we have Tune Into My Heart’s radio communications theme, Remedy’s medical theme (but not quite as contrived as JLS’s Beat Again) and the car-scenario No Brakes (again, on the near side of the fine line that Michelle Williams’ edged over with Stop This Car).

Hearts Collide is a bit Kylie-ish, it sounds like a cover actually. Doesn’t really matter, it’s a good song, but not very unique. I like the military beat of Ghost, it stands out because of that. Roy Kerr’s guest vocals on Symmetry are solid, and perhaps a bit too solid as Little Boots sounds a bit weak in comparison – a good song but the vocal blending not quite there! Remedy is the next single, a dance-a-holic affair with an uplifting double chorus.

Overall, the metaphors and endless synths does get a bit tiring all in one album, although the latter point is what I signed up for when I bought it so it’s not a complaint so much as surprise at how I missed real instruments! Considering all the tracks are completely synth, there is enough variety to stop the songs melting into one another – they all have their distinct identities. There are some spectacular choruses on the album but few of the verses have stuck in my head after a couple of listens (except for Symmetry which is the other way round). Filler tracks? In my opinion Click, and perhaps Tune Into My Heart. And don’t get me started about the hidden track Hands tacked on at the end which is an acoustic piano pile of shit – I’m going to forget it exists as it breaks my heart that it’s on there!

Altogether a 9/10 (excluding the hidden track)  – despite some misgivings I would be happy to listen to a lot of the tracks again and again, and the album coheres as a whole.

Little Boots – New In Town

So the artist chosen by the BBC as the ‘sound of 2009′, Little Boots (aka Victoria Hesketh) has released her first music video proper, for the new single New In Town:

I absolutely love the song, it’s really catchy and immediate and not too samey all the way through or conspicuously electronic. I did buy her EP a few months back (mainly because it had Meddle on it, the song that saved that particular edition of Later… with Jools Holland from the complete overrated rubbish of Fleet Foxes and an underwhelming Killers) although I won’t claim to know what ‘her sound’ is.

But like a lot of others I think the video is a bit disappointing, mainly her walking around homeless people with supermarket trolleys and some really slutty people (I think it’s ‘dancing’ but looks more like fully clothed porn) – while not doing any dancing. Accompanying the sudden change from exuberant chorus into chilly (and amazing) middle 8 – she, well, goes into a garage. Gets in a car, and then gets out the other side as she’s forced out by a randy couple.

And not very UK-ish either. Think of Lily Allen’s LDN – yes, it was specifically about London, but it set her up as a pioneering British artist. Whereas this video looks like it’s shot in the US, so looking at it from somebody who’s not heard of her before, is she a new, exciting UK artist, or somebody crossing the pond from the US, like Katy Perry? I think she could have set her identity up a bit more.

Great song though. I’ll definitely be getting the album as soon as it comes out.