Little Boots - "Stuck on Repeat"

yeah love this, derivative as it may be - it's by the long haired guy in Hot Chip no?

Yeah, one of the Hot Chip guys anyways, not quite sure of the hair length. And the singer is apparently from Dead Disco, though that means very little to me, honestly.

The 2+ minute long build in the middle of this is sooo great.

I'm slightly surprised she hasn't gotten more attention on here. Seems like pretty great pop songs, and she does this YouTube covers series, and she writes all her songs, using a Tenori-on and a stylophone and other strange instruments. On the other hand, it's produced by the Hot Chip guy, it's pop, and her YouTube covers series is a bit obvious.

Can't stand her. Saw her on Jools Holland and it was like Faith Brown impersonating Kate Bush while playing PacMan. Guardian Weekend cover story before she's even put any records out - enough to put anyone off.

Bored with all these Blue Square indie also-rans being hyped up as some sort of "I'm mad, me" pseudo-newness (see also Florence and the Machine etc. or rather, don't).

Freak-folk's influence on pop, perhaps?

> Can't stand her. Saw her on Jools Holland...

i was very taken with her JH appearance, just her, a piano, a stylophone and japanese beatbox thing. i liked the way she spent a couple of seconds at the start programming the drum loops from scratch. i liked the way she'd be playing the bass with her left hand and the stylophone with her right. i liked the way the clapping didn't get picked up by the mic for the first few bars before she adapted. i liked that she'd had her hair done especially because she was on tv. i liked the general autonomy of it, just her and 3 instruments doing everything (unlike the Monkey thing on the same show which needed a cast of thousands, and a panda).

(reminded me of everything i like about the pastels, somehow.)

agree with all of that (except being reminded of the pastels but then i don't know them too well)

Yeah, it's kind of nice that her live shows are hap dash, but her recorded output is polished and pop. It really boils down to how you feel about pop for the recorded stuff.

Regardless, it's relevant, because she was just voted BBC's "Sound of 2009," she was recently remixed by Alexander Robotnick (that's some serious street cred), and she was on the cover of the Fader, yet she hasn't even put an album out... That's a lot of pressure for her to make it good, no?

I personally like the stuff, but I'm a popfreak.

Stuck On Repeat is a bit too diffident to really engage me, its a bit 00s electropop by numbers. Meddle is a lot better but I prefer the original clattery version to the one that actually made the EP.

Also, lol street team.

Surely I'm not the only person out there who prefers "Meddle" over "Stuck on Repeat"?

fucking thing sucks

I've read people describing her as post nu-rave. fucking POST NU-RAVE. What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

Dunno wot it's supposed to mean, but still think "stuck on repeat" is great and can't get into "Meddle" at all. Almost went to see her tonite but got too drunk at Andrew WK and couldn't get friends to go anyways.

Definitely not street team--interviewed her yesterday, and was just curious about what ilm thought.

Side note: Apparently, Atlantic is re-starting Elektra as their "cooler, non-hip hop" arm (what I gathered from the labelspeak of her pub), and she's going to be a centerpiece. Hmmm...

She's quite nice, fwiw.

Meddle one of my favourite songs of last year or whenever I heard it. Stuck on Repeat is a bit of a grower and good, but not as good.

Shame Dead Disco didn't release more stuff, though.

This is Metronomy remix of The Treatment by Dead Disco and what I keep comparing this EP unfavourably against. Overall I thought her voice worked better in a guitar band context anyway, I really liked Dead Disco and am kind of meh on Little Boots.

she is pretty

cover of "day n nite"

Stuck On Repeat is by miles the worst thing I've heard by her - New In Town has been in my head for about three days and Love Kills, erm, kills. I'm actually anticipating the album now.

I found the album disappointingly generic :/

stuck on repeat is like a tolerable version of "can't get you out of my head" - just as catchy but not as annoying. I like the dubstepp-y version of Meddle and the Fake Blood remix of SOR.

is there a single producer left in the uk who hasn't remixed little boots?

'new in town' is pretty good, would be better sung by someone else, but as i've said elsewhere i'm just relieved that there's at least one of these hype overdrive acts that i don't hate

Matt DC's right. Every song that's surfaced since "Stuck on Repeat" has been superior (my favorite being "Mathematics," though its chart prospects are probably low should it ever be released as a single).

Interested in hearing the album so I can evaluate the song with Phil Oakey as a whole rather than just a 30sec clip at Popjustice.

The album would have been better if all the remixers had produced the album - suffers a little from the dead hand of Greg Kurstin, I think.

agree, probably - that's the danger of getting everyone in for the remixes, you hear 'new in town' and think it's pretty good, and then you hear the goldielocks/drop the lime rmxes and it's like BUT THIS IS GREAT AND LOADS BETTER.

Kurstin has definitely been spreading himself thin

can't see LB charting as well as La Roux somehow

Why not? She's a better singer, has better tunes, has more hype behind her, is a bit more indie, and is hotter.

I just had to look up who Greg Kurstin was and my anticipation has just deflated a tad. That Ladyhawke album was my prime example of how to do this sort of thing badly.

La Roux is this year's romofied Kate Nash, whereas LB feels a bit like the Blue Square Kylie/Goldfrapp.

best things Kurstin has done recently = Lily Allen 'The Fear' and 'Kabul Shit' :/

it's a bit of a shame Hesketh went blonde right before first TV appearance /cynic

tbqh I don't think I've liked any of her originals since "Meddle", although I really really really want to hear the Phil Oakey collaboration.

the fred falke remix of new in town is ok but im stunned by how bad the original is

BBC Breakfast yesterday...

dope imo

"i filmed half the album in LA" heh

would pash 09

album leaked...

not getting the love for that Falke remix much

the interview with Popjustice was actually kinda interesting

New in Town sounds like sub-Girls Aloud album filler with a few gristly sounding synth stabs. Poor

it's always troubled me that her website title text isn't "Little Boots" but "Buy new album Hands & gig tickets at the official Little Boots UK website" and that i get 2 emails a week saying pretty much the same thing (along with some actual content, usually lower down)

interesting that despite a hugely aggressive PR push [inc tawdry articles on the sun's website calling her boot-iful and that toe-curling bbc breakfast clip] the single didn't even make the top 10

and yeah the relentless marketing spiel that comes from the boots camp is really offputting. on her recent live gigs she was waffling on about getting radio a-list, plus twittering ppl to buy her single on itunes to put it in the top 10. like who cares? more interested in her songs than that level of apprentice-lite crap

don't think GA haven't really done an electropoppish number this slow tho rockford

NI yeah #13 seems low in the end - 50/50 on whether it will climb like In For The Kill did. but surely most artists use twitter to say 'please buy my single'.

> that toe-curling bbc breakfast clip

that's the kind of thing (along with solo on jools holland and blogging her trip to the stylophone factory) that endears me to her. but then i'm not really her (or probably anyone's) target market.

favourite track on the album - the hidden one (actually the title track) at the end.

> endears me to her

er, her to me.

New In Town is better than any GA single for a good four years, strangely I'm not optimistic about the album.

every pop star on twitter asks people to buy their singles to get into the top 10

said elsewhere that LB has the keri hilson problem, in that 'new in town' sounds like a demo that a talented songwriter would hawk around for other artists to sing. other artists who could make me give a shit about its strong lyrics and hook. as it is i'm just looking at the LB album in itunes and deflating at the idea of listening to it.

She's a lot better than Ladyhawke though.

The above quote that she 'didn't fit the role' really rings true. She was never going to be a globe-stomping tabloid-friendly pop star and it was a mistake to shove her into the quick-returns industry cycle - has anyone other than Lady Gaga in the dancey-poppy field succeeded at this in the past few years?

I'm seeing a lot of parallels with the way Hurts are being marketed - thread here: Hurts - in that it feels very forced and micro-managed (heard some interesting tales from journalists/prs/agents who've dealt with their ultra heavy-handed team). It seems the Hurts blokes are more suited for mainstream fame than LB ever was but hitting only #50 with the first single proper suggests they're not connecting with the general pop-buying public.

No-one likes to have that feeling of being force-fed.

still haven't heard a note of Hurts

xpost Yeah I phrased that badly, I meant more that Annie wasn't being pegged as the new chart-popping sensation in our lives (ie. she wasn't on the front cover of the Guardian magazine, voted BBC Sound of 2009 etc) so her failure to go massive wasn't as shocking as LB's. I'm more thinking about Anniemal in 2004/5 as that album did seem like it'd go massive, by the time of Don't Stop it was kinda obvious she'd always be a cult pop act.

I guess the Erot connection gives Annie some kind of "indie credibility" in some small but loud circles that other electropop acts cannot quite match.

She was never going to be a globe-stomping tabloid-friendly pop star and it was a mistake to shove her into the quick-returns industry cycle - has anyone other than Lady Gaga in the dancey-poppy field succeeded at this in the past few years?

In terms of big commercial success, I would say La Roux have suceeded quite well. Surely not in the same league as Lady Gaga, but still a handfull of very big hits, that even crossed over to a rather huge number of markets rather than staying in the UK market doing little outside the UK.

Regarding the supposed failure, the UK chart performance of the three singles from Little Boots' first album was rather similar to the three singles from "Speak & Spell". Did Depeche Mode fail?

Those were different times, old pip.

I don't think you can compare someone who has released one album in today's marketplace after a truckload of hype with a band who released their first album two and a half decades ago and subsequently went on to sell millions of records. That's ridiculous.

Still utterly baffled by the success of La Roux.

Have they 'succeeded' where LB failed?

Hmmm...

2 La Roux In For The Kill Single Mar 2009
1 La Roux Bulletproof Single Jul 2009
2 La Roux La Roux Album Jul 2009 Notes
27 La Roux I'm Not Your Toy Single Oct 2009
19 La Roux La Roux (re-entry) Album Jan 2010
28 La Roux In For The Kill (re-emergence) Single Jan 2010

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsX4FPFBgFk

Someone at work is off to see Ladyhawke tonight. This whole electro-girl songwriter craze feels like a very long time ago indeed, but I'm glad the artists involved haven't been completely dropped.

Yeah, that song does sound a bit quaint.

I really like that song.

About time to get them back. This anthemic stadium dance thing courtesy of David Guetta, Swedish House Mafia etc. is a bit wearing in the long run. Longing to see new stuff from Little Boots and La Roux instead.

New album streaming http://pitchfork.com/advance/82-nocturnes/

holy SHIT this is amazing

Not really sure about this tbh, feels kinda lacking in personality, both in vocal and production terms. And I liked big sections of the first album.

i'm liking a fair amount of this

I'm in shock at how good this is. It's so much better than the first album.

Beat Beat needs to be put out as a single right now!

It's quite good! Just been listening to it here this hour which given the Slayer news has been more than a little incongruous.

Thought this was sounded like a bunch of fourth singles from a late Kylie album. Except Crescendo, which is so good it shows how average the rest is.

That's exactly what it sounds like, that or really watered down Saint Etienne copyists. The anonymuity of the production doesn't help - this Tensnake remix of one of the tracks is so much better:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tofjr7L3h9Q

Also is this slipping out with zero publicity entirely? Feels like the music industry just gave up on her.

Considering it's produced by Tim Goldsworthy, James Ford and Andy Butler it sounds shockingly anonymous, and the lyrics are dreck. Maybe Joe Goddard wasn't returning her calls. It's a shame because after the perceived disappointment of the debut (even though it went gold) she needed to kill it this time around and this just isn't going to save her.

Also is this slipping out with zero publicity entirely?

i feel like i've seen more people checking for (as in, going to listen to) this album than i really should have done, considering. i'll probably check it out at some point but idk why it made a lot of people drop what they were doing for it

I think there was a general feeling of unresolved potential there, she's obviously got good taste and I did see rumours that she was working with Joe Goddard and Tensnake and there was this vague feeling that she might end up doing something really exciting but that hasn't really happened.

Why isn't "Headphones" on this? It should be.

all the singles since the 1st album have been great i thought, but no Headphones? that's weird.

yeah i like pretty much all of this now. good record.

'strangers' is pretty clumsy and the clear weak link, 'beat beat' is massive and probably should be a single

679 didn't want to release the finished record but allowed her to release it on her own label, hence no Headphones-

I thought Headphones was always meant to be a standalone single? Seems like I read something to that effect when it popped up.

As per above comments, I kinda wish she found a producer soulmate and established a less anonymous identity. The MNDR album last year did this sort of thing better.

I played this again and really enjoyed it pretty much all the way through. I really like how it flows. It's a shame it's not going to sell at all. This kind of sounds like the album I thought she'd make when I first heard the full version of Stuck On Repeat back in 2008. A lot of the stuff she tried on Hands just didn't suit her that much, Remedy gave her an actual hit single but you could tell it wasn't her style.

I never understood why she did an edit of Stuck on Repeat for the album and didn't put it out as a proper single? She answers that in this interview.

http://thefourohfive.com/news/article/i-know-who-i-am-and-where-i-am-at-now-the-405-meets-little-boots

I actually really like this album.

liking this, reminds me some of that kathy diamond album a few yrs back. i can see this being great for the summer

yeah i get its flaws, but i just dig the album's sound, house stuff is gonna always do it for me

Seems like she needs to have a bit of space and do her own thing without any pressures. Hopefully she hasn’t burnt herself out by the whole major-label thing.

is there a remix disc or w/e of this planned? i feel like there should be

damn this shd have more than 595 views https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuCLJLDHQJk

little boots has quietly been making very good music for the past 5 years

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sQzEib6hOA

I totally missed this new EP but it is characteristically brilliant. I think about her and Charli XCX in similar terms - why are people so suspicious of artists who openly admit they want to make great pop music?

in her case probably because her first go-round wasn't great (I still like "Remedy" though) and lost among La Roux/v1 Lady Gaga/etc; also it doesn't help that there's really no solid place in the music press right now for this kind of thing except, like, Popjustice

("well why didn't you pitch it" because I totally missed it)

I enjoyed the first album a lot at the time and was completely underwhelmed by the follow-up. Played the debut a month ago and it was sounding like it came from a completely different pop universe to now, like the idea that anyone would try and pitch those songs as mainstream concern seems totally alien in a world of straight-down-the-line maximalist Zara Larsson bangers.

the follow-up was uneven but the first four tracks are completely unfuckwithable (really, it should have been an EP)

yeah "Motorway" is probably the greatest thing she's ever done give or take "Stuck On Repeat"

I love this video for Eros though, it's such a simple concept but it looks incredible

The second album is my favourite. Still love “Every Night I Say a Prayer@.

Yeah, I love that second album. One of my favourite albums of the decade. Working Girl was crazy underrated too. Both much stronger and more consistent than Hands.