The lady James Blake is here in the form of 19-year-old Låpsley, who is from Merseyside but has confusingly added an accent to her name – perhaps to suggest she could just as easily have crafted her minimal electronic ballads in a Scandinavian log cabin. The familiar post-dubstep hallmarks – minor-key piano, handclaps, pitched-down vocal samples – tastefully cradle her superb, if slightly affected, Adele-sounding voice as it delivers her girl-alone-in-the-world bedroom songs. In fact, these are just the kind of neo-pop touches her superstar labelmate would probably have liked to try on her last album, instead of having to resort to the same old monochrome lung-busters. Låpsley’s own attempts at Adele-sized mainstream hits are a bit too obvious – see Operator (He Doesn’t Call Me), bred in a Petri dish with Mark Ronson, Amy Winehouse and some cowbells. Better are the moments when it gets a bit brooding: Tell Me the Truth, an inky soul number that does wonders with Låpsley’s smoky lyrics about isolating relationships, hints at the gravitas she could convey once she escapes her forebear’s shadow.
