Refined, savvy pop music always has a job competing against its more lurid and lowest common denominator counterpart. This is Victoria “Little Boots” Hesketh’s third album of recherché electropop and, like its predecessors, Nocturnes (2013) and Hands (2009), it packs a selection of nagging tunes that could easily light up the mainstream as, say, the Pet Shop Boys once did, if rave-ified R&B didn’t exert such a stranglehold on the charts. Lead single Better in the Morning is about being a dirty stop-out, and imports Tom Tom Club’s singsong 80s lilting into the Nordic model of 21st-century chanson; hot US producer Ariel Rechtshaid (Haim, Vampire Weekend) is on board to smooth the transitions on the rest of this sharp album. Now that working girl Hesketh is running her own label, she really needs to hire a hotsync agent.
