Boots walking away from pop?

Boots walking away from pop?

Polite though she may be, it’s clear that Victoria Hesketh — aka UK DIY-pop singer Little Boots — doesn’t enjoy being interviewed.
Seated in her record company’s offices the day before she took to the stage for the Melbourne leg of the Parklife festival, the diminutive blonde spoke quickly and, at times, unenthusiastically about her rise to fame and the trappings — press, touring, gossip — that have come with it.
Her focus is on the music — the shimmering, hook-heavy album Hands that she created with a behind-the-scenes cast including Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard and Bird & The Bee’s Greg Kurstin.
Amidst these impossibly hip collaborations, one song on the record stands out a mile: current single Remedy, the result of a writing session with man of the moment RedOne. While it’s the most unashamedly commercial song on Hands, it’s also thankfully one of the few RedOne-produced songs since his work on Just Dance and Poker Face not to sound like a Lady Gaga rip-off.
“I think that’s because of the combination of the two of us,” Hesketh said.
“Most of the time he writes songs for people, not with them, so I think he enjoyed writing with me and meeting me in the middle.”
Armed with a debut album that mixes high-sheen pop (the Goldfrapp-lite New In Town) with more obtuse sounds (the banging cacophony that is Meddle), does Hesketh feel she’s straddling the divide between mainstream pop and more unprocessed indie music?
“That seems to be more where other people have placed me, rather than where I’ve put myself. Some people see me as more indie, just because I do write and play my own music. But I’m pop. I don’t think indie kids are listening to songs like Remedy — well, if they are, they’re doing it secretly in their bedrooms.”
Hesketh sees no division between her self-penned songs and the more quote-unquote ‘manufactured’ pop of contemporaries like Girls Aloud. With that in mind, would she seek out other proven pop songwriters for album two — perhaps UK powerhouse Xenomania, the team behind that group?
“Maybe. But I don’t know if I’m going to do another album,” she sniffed.
“I enjoy making albums, but then there’s a lot of other stuff you have to do after you’ve made the music that I don’t like.”
Like interviews?
“Yeah. It’s more fun just to make music. Maybe it’d be better just to be the tea lady at Xenomania and help out with the songwriting for Girls Aloud,” she mused.
She paused for a moment, momentarily smitten with the idea, before changing her mind.
“But then I love performing. I love the rush of seeing people singing your songs back to you. I don’t think I ever could give that up.”
info: Hands is out now through Warner Music.

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