You might not have immediately warmed to La Roux's Elly Jackson, the moody, Bulletproof ice-queen with sharp synths and an even sharper quiff. But beneath this debut album's frosty exterior lay a record with real soul to it.
Sure, the keyboard stabs and piercing falsetto were high in the mix, but Jackson was using them to articulate a very teenage sense of heartbreak and alienation. Unlike their more one-dimensional hipster peers, La Roux understood that the best 80s music combined dancefloor magic with a sense of melancholy.
The key track on this album, then, wasn't one of the clutch of brilliant singles: Bulletproof, Quicksand, I'm Not Your Toy … not even In for the Kill (which single-handedly launched the duo, thanks to Skream's dubstep remix becoming a word-of-mouth club sensation). No, the crucial song here was Cover My Eyes ("When I see you walking with her, I have to cover my eyes"), a track Elly poured so much heart into that she broke down in tears the minute the tape stopped rolling.
2009 has seen La Roux's star rise with such steep ascent that the duo were always going to gather haters – witness the depressingly sexist claptrap over how Elly "can't sing properly" (Hey, it's "Meg White can't drum" all over again). But this was a record very much in tune, not just musically, but with how it feels to be young and heartbroken. No other pop album this year managed to pull that trick off quite so effortlessly.
