La Roux v Little Boots: FIIIIIIIGGHHTT!!!

Gobby 80's electro-popper Elly Jackson - yes, her out of La Roux - has been shooting her mouth off again, this time, bless her, pitying the infinitely more talented Little Boots.

Jackson says Victoria Hesketh - yes, her out of Little Boots - has received unfair criticism over her album Hands, which failed to perform to expectations by reaching just 5 in the album charts.

The be-quiffed one said: “The reaction she got was so unfair. Hype can be a very dangerous thing, it can accelerate people’s expectations. We felt the same about our album but we have got away with it.”

Now, that might seem fair enough, but as usual with Jackson there seems to be a snidey undertone to her words. And we don't like it.

And it's not the first time she's put her foot in her mouth. After her initial success, she said: "It wasn't like I was jumping for joy, or anything - when you hear you're number two in the charts, it's great, but you can't feel it. It's just a fact, and it's very hard to feel a fact."

Well, it's not a fact that I've slept with Scarlett Johansson, but if it was, I think I would feel pretty good about it. I'd be ecstatic, in fact.

And even more stupidly, she slagged off the state of the pop charts, er, while she was doing well in the pop charts.

"To me, pop music has always had two sides. It's always had the Backstreet Boys side, music for kids, the novelty tracks and one-hit-wonder side. And the other side is the classier side such as David Bowie, The Beatles, Prince and Michael Jackson.

"I just feel like this side is missing too much, and have a lot of this boy/girl band, novelty song, one-hit-wonder going on."

What, like you? She's also had a pop at R 'n' B in her time, but we don't like it either so she can have that one.

We'll leave you with this golden nugget: "I wanted things to build gradually. But, because of the internet, it's hard to keep things low-key these days."

Poor baby...

La Roux album review

I really wanted to dislike this album. I had dismissed Elly Jackson and Ben Langmaid (yep, I had to look up his name, but that seems to be the way they both prefer it) as try-hard bandwagon-jumpers, riding the wave of 80s inspired pop indiscriminately to the top of the charts, making mugs of the general public.

But there’s a surprising amount of depth present in their debut, aside from the three giant singles Quicksand, In For The Kill and Bulletproof (admittedly the three catchiest and most memorable tracks on the album).

But the standout song is the slow-burning As If By Magic, where Jackson sings in a couple of keys lower than the ear-bleeding usual. The layered vocals in the chorus are easily the best bit of the record, and it’s a shame the track dies out so quietly.

It’s not all good though. Fascination is about 1/1000^th as good as the track of the same name by Alphabeat, Tigerlily’s spoken male vocal is horribly misjudged, and the closing two tracks are simply dull.

But all in all there’s enough here to suggest Jackson and Langmaid may be a pair worth keeping an eye on. It will certainly be interesting to see how the Caribbean steel drums on the next single I’m Not Your Toy goes down with record-buyers.

This review was originally published on The Music Magazine.