Little Boots - Interview - January 2009
By: Hayley Leaver
Blackpool's own Victoria Hesketh is inducing tedious comparisons all over the shop with her snarling pop outfit, Little Boots. Cue the 'Blondie-meets-Kylie' connections as the tiny ex-Dead Disco member rams more synths and glitter into one shimmering pop single then a Scissor Sisters gig. After coming second to the multi-coloured spectacle that is Florence And The Machine in the Brit's Critic's Choice Award this year, and scooping the top spot on the BBC's 'Sound Of 2009' list, Victoria is bringing "fantasy themes" to the foreground of pop with her well-received single and forthcoming album.
Being tipped as a 'one to watch' is frequently an inevitable progression into the world of the one hit wonder, but after watching one band run its course into nothingness, is the sparkly lass feeling the pressure of a sudden step into the limelight?
"Well literally we haven't got time for messing it up, you know, we're having a really steep learning curve," she chirps shortly before her first ever London gig for Concrete and Glass Festival. "But it's just so good to be out there and getting the songs out to people, and getting people's reactions. I love it, it's brilliant."
This infectious chatter helps to explain how Little Boots manage to twist sickly sweet disco pop with just enough heartache to stop it being nauseous. Describing influences such as Kate Bush, David Bowie and - weirdly - Sylvia Plath, Victoria took on her Latin alias a year after Dead Disco disbanded, and has since received much attention from critics and musical peers alike (Joe Goddard of Hot Chip fame has produced some of her tracks). But how is the northern charmer finding this huge step from being one third of an all-girl indie electro band to Blackpool's answer to Roisin Murphy?
"Yeah, I mean it's just backwards", she describes with a wry smile, "I've never done a solo project in my life so that's a massive first, and then I've always been in a band where you write together and things come from the practise room, and live is one of the first things you do. Whereas this is like, I've already written and recorded all the songs before, and then kind of had to go backwards and relearn the songs for a live thing."
With the new album expected to be released soon in the new year, Little Boots are all about doing something new - "not your typical boys-with-guitars set-up, just trying to do the opposite of that."
And they are certainly not your standard indie guitar band. Described by Alison Howe, producer of BBC Two's Later... With Jools Holland as "Debbie Harry [if she] had come from Blackpool and played the synthesiser," what inspired this ambition to make a 'Little Boots' world?
"Just like, I'm really excited by technology and synthesisers, new instruments, and gadgets and stuff, and a lot of the things we do in the studio is all electronic." Victoria continues, getting increasingly animated about the music that she is obviously genuinely passionate about. "It's not just made on a computer or some magic machine, to a lot of people it's still quite a mystery - electronic music, and you just think some machine makes it but it's actually a real physical process and I'm really like excited by that sort of stuff."
Managing to remain wholly unpretentious about her self-confessed geekish obsession with synths and everything electro, she explains the various instruments used during recording, including one "called a tenori-on, which is like a new kind of sequencer made of lights, and we've got things like Theremins, and percussion, and just loads of synths and stuff." She continues that her music is there to "really excite people, and take them somewhere else. There's nothing worse then going to a bland gig, and it kind of washing over you and walking out feeling uninspired. At least people can take something with them, and it takes them somewhere else or makes them think in a new way, just for that little time. That's the power of music and art and stuff, it can take you somewhere, and open your imagination, and make you think new things and be creative."
The new (apparently almost completed) album was written partly in London and partly in Los Angeles, but it remains to be seen whether the massive culture shocks that undoubtedly occurred when moving between places will have affected the music.
"Yeah the really slick, sun-kissed tracks are from LA," she laughs loudly, before getting serious about the record she has clearly worked hard to finish. "LA was obviously like a big culture shock, just not knowing anyone. And then I've just moved to London a few months back from Blackpool, which is like, a massive contrast, and so I think both of those situations were both quite culture shocks. There's probably themes in the album of that, of being thrown into a new situation and the kind of excitement, but then mixed with the anxiety and scary side of it as well, and being a new person and an outsider maybe."
It's not all culture shock and outsider anxieties: Little Boots are all for creating a whole other magical world with their music. "[The album has] stuff about fantasy themes, and it goes back to the escapism thing and just like, imaginative stuff. There's stuff about magic and I just really love that whole fantasy side of stuff."
Earlier track 'Mathematics' takes Pythagoras' theory and brings it back to heartache (Take just a little of my mind and subtract it from my soul/ Add a fraction of your half and you'll see it makes me whole), written after Victoria read Sylvia Plath's poem, 'Love Is A Paralax'. There's more to this band then their thumping dance music that will undoubtedly go down a skinny-jeaned storm at indie nights across the country. And as for how she hopes people will discover the Little Boots' world in its sequinned glory?
"Snapped straight into their brains from space," she says, with a deadpan face, then giggles, "erm, I don't know, I mean there's so many ways now, and so many different ways that you can access music but I just think that's even more exciting. The thing is, everyone comes to it from a different place, and everyone has their own musical journey and everything else around you will inform you. I think it's important that everyone comes from different places, and I think everyone has their own different experiences and takes different things away."
Whether this soulful disco pop is your cup of tea, there is no doubt that Little Boots in one name that will feature heavily in 2009. After so much hype the pressure has undoubtedly been mounting on Victoria Hesketh and band, but who knows if they can live up to it and bring electro beats thumping up to the top of the charts.
Artists in this article: Little Boots