Text: Dai Man

Finally, with the arrival of England’s new Queen, we’ll be hearing less of that annoying young American woman. Lancashire Lovely Victoria Hesketh, aka Little Boots was named by a friend; in Latin, the name Caligula meaning Little Boots. As a singer Little Boots has apparently tried a lot. Punk music, jazz, progressive, she even tried out for Pop Idol. So having arrived back at the beginning of Victoria proclaimed “I don’t care about being cool or edgy. I wanna reach people and I wanna make music that people have fun to and have a good time.” She set to writing pop songs. And the simple, unpretentious and thoroughly catchy tunes that followed caught the attention of the YouTube generation. Her win in the BBC Sound of Music 2009 poll and runner-up to Florence And The Machine for Critics Choice award at the BRITs have brought her mainstream media attention and a genuine buzz around the arrival of debut CD Hands. This is a shimmering record, brightly polished and sleek with Hesketh delivering the goods with a battery of delightful pop tunes. There are a couple of major missteps mid-album, Ghost and Mathematics both being harrowing experiences, but not enough to seriously dent one’s enjoyment of this brilliant first offering, from the woman that probably just claimed summer 2009 all for herself, Little Boots.