She’s got the remedy.
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[7.00]
Katherine St Asaph: Little Boots, as hundreds of artists unremarkably flood a dance-pop genre that was already crowded when she debuted, has quietly become one of the better artists in it. Burn, her new EP, balances the ambitious — written entirely with underrated female and nonbinary producers — with the ruthlessly effective, like “Eros”: alternately steely and keening, with lots of disco strings. “We wanted to channel Kylie meets Hercules & Love Affair meets classic disco,” Hesketh said, PR-speak probably but still miles in goals and execution from “I guess it’s success. The team’s goal, I suppose, is to sell records. [re: What was the goal of Little Boots?]” In a better world, this still would.
[7]
Tim de Reuse: Plastic basslines with rounded edges, tinny string patches that make zero effort to sound like the genuine object, and a positively juicy drum loop all bring out something insidious in the rise-fall of the chorus’s melody and its accompanying “la la la”s. It’s gotta be tricky to sound playful while you’re cooing lines like “Just because it’s cruel / doesn’t mean we won’t desire it,” because a single misstep might wreck the listener’s suspension of disbelief and make them realize how absolutely cartoonish the concept is in a Suicide Squad-ish kind of way. “Eros” threads that particular needle effortlessly. It doesn’t really accomplish anything else of note, but on top of this incredibly solid foundation anything more would just have been icing on the cake.
[8]
Alfred Soto: When Little Boots sings “Only love…” and “Am I dreaming?” she summons the winsome toughness of Sarah Cracknell, but the track, dependent on disco strings and precise use of echo, has no trace of Saint Etienne-ness. I would listen to an entire album of “Eros.”
[7]
Will Adams: A wonderful arrangement of elements taken from various eras of dancepop: “la la”‘s indebted to ATC, “Funkytown” string hits, Minogue dynasty dreaminess. It’s no surprise Hesketh stands back somewhat to let Planningtorock’s hypnotic track take the floor, but her coolness prevents “Eros” from drawing its bow as far back as it could’ve.
[6]
Kat Stevens: I like the hint of Róisín Murphy’s “Overpowered” that’s propelling this song slowly and steadily along the suburban train tracks, and I like the sharp electroclash strings that are thin raindrops slashing diagonally against the window. True, Victoria’s wispy vocal could be a bit meatier, but it’s certainly preferable to the pseudo-sultry automated loo voice telling you not to flush away your ex-boyfriend’s jumper.
[6]
Peter Ryan: No one was paying attention to Little Boots in 2015 — Hands suffocated under its own hype, and Nocturnes showed no interest in reviving commercial expectations. So when Hesketh enlisted a mess of producer-collaborators to create Working Girl, and actually wrangled the outputs into her strongest, most cohesive set of songs yet, it passed with negative fanfare. “Eros” is in a similar vein — a deft balance between precise high-fashion dance and sonic nods toward camp — but Planningtorock’s careful gathering storm of production boosts Little Boots to a new severity. This fervent want is delirium, that undercurrent is dread, and the titular figure — “beating wings and threading needles into eyes” — sounds more demonic than divine. It’s a prelude, perched on the fulcrum between bliss and ruin.
[8]