Long gone is the wide-eyed synth obsessive found on Little Boots’ first two albums, Hands and Nocturnes. The 2015 Victoria Hesketh, CEO of On Repeat Records, is a Working Girl: up at 5am, doused in Elnett and spending her days shouting “Buy! Sell!” into a massive brick phone. It takes two tracks to realise the 80s-executive aesthetic is a misnomer; her cute, perfectly produced pastel pop portrays an artist who is lonesome rather than independent, and distant rather than defiant. Occasionally she asserts her authority – as on the sassy Get Things Done, or Better in the Morning, an ode to office hangovers that resembles the giddy sister to Suzanne Vega’s Tom’s Diner. But often the sentiment feels frail: Real Girl is about a feckless boyfriend, but instead of eviscerating him, she begs, “Won’t you treat me like a real girl?”, before wibbling, “You were my hero, I was your heroine,” on the anaemic Heroine. Working Girl’s weakness is not in Hesketh’s insecurity, or the songs themselves, but in the fact that it breaches what was advertised.
