Do you remember the 1980s? Listen even briefly to the new album from British synthpop merchant Little Boots and you soon will. Despite attracting some acclaim in her home country and reaching seventh place on the Heatseekers Albums chart in the US with her first album, Hands, in 2010, she has hardly rocked the charts since. Could her third album, released on iTunes today, turn things around?
During the last half-decade, Little Boots – real name Victoria Hesketh – has quietly toured as a DJ and singer, set up her own record label, On Repeat Records, and released her second album, Nocturnes. That album was rather more of a slow-burner than her debut. Working Girl, on the other hand, is the most experimental and, as a result, the most inconsistent in quality of the three albums. Still, the songs that do work are utterly sumptuous, easily rivaling her best material on Hands.
Tracks that stand out immediately include the thumping ‘Get Things Done’ and the pulse-quickening ‘Business Pleasure’, perhaps her best song since her biggest commercial hit, ‘Remedy’, in 2009. The best material on Working Girl benefits from a masculine energy that suits the synthpop genre, and this perhaps explains why the greater subtlety of ‘Taste It’ ranks it among the low points. Metaphorically speaking, then: Little Boots has had a good day at work, but that coveted promotion might be just out of reach.