Heaven, London
Pop's nearly woman evokes Kylie and Lady Gaga, but ultimately brings a wide-eyed intensity all her own
A look back at the BBC Sound of 2009 poll proves that critics are no better at predicting the future than anyone else. Victoria Hesketh, the 29-year-old singer/DJ behind Little Boots, beat the then unknown Lady Gaga and Florence and the Machine to the title, but afterwards nothing happened quite as it should have. Despite a No 5 debut album, she was dropped by her label; her second LP, self-released this year after a lengthy gestation, only reached No 45.
Where did it go wrong? This one-off show offers one answer. Hesketh evokes half a dozen other bespangled electropop females, but doesn't stake out much territory that's uniquely hers. She pushes the idea of costume as art – for the encore she wears an LED coat that lights her up like a small blonde android – but so does Gaga. Her physical appeal is based on an erotic wholesomeness – just like Kylie – and her interest in technology has a Robynish tinge. Even Sophie Ellis-Bextor is detectable, in lyrics layered with banalities about a mythical place called "the dancefloor". (It's where she goes to forget about the caddish characters who manipulate her feelings – one cad per song.)
But nobody's perfect. And it's precisely because she's the Blackpool Kylie that Hesketh is a pleasure to watch. The show is a pared-down version of a Kylie glitterthon, with one costume change, modest disco lights and a small band augmented by two oddly numb-looking backing singers. The latter have little to do, because Little Boots, moving between microphone and a Korg keyboard, is a singing, swivelling dynamo. Her wide-eyed intensity is her strong point: dazzle-poppers such as Headphones and Stuck on Repeat squeeze a lot of mileage out of dancing-as-escapism, but she brings the concept to life. When she swoons through Remedy's key line – "Spin me faster like a kaleidoscope, all I've got is the floor" – she's the picture of the girl next door, spinning until real life disappears.
The set is an invigorating twirl through the new album, Nocturnes, with a few hits from debut Hands added for ballast. Boots has spent much time DJing recently, and the last third of the show is laden with bassy, trancey effects. It's not until the encore, featuring the evening's only ballad, All for You, that you realise how (splendidly) frenetic the rest of the show has been.
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by Caroline Sullivan via Music: Electronic music | theguardian.com
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