Top 10 Albums: #2
2. Little Boots, Hands
I don't even remember how I ended up downloading Little Boots' debut full-length album, Hands. I don't think it was on a recommendation from a friend or anything like that. It was either in my iTunes Genius recs after I bought Florence + the Machine's Lungs (body part albums??? lol), or after I started working at Bath & Body Works (summer 2009, but I wouldn't have heard of her till 2010), since a number of her songs were (and still are, actually) on the store playlist. This is quickly becoming irrelevant, so... moving on.
Anyway, Little Boots (née Victoria Christina Hesketh) is a British electropop artist. I thought Hands was your standard fun electronic music whatever album and Little Boots was just some rando pop songstress, but girlfriend is actually super talented. She writes or co-writes all her own music and lyrics and plays a lot of instruments: piano, keyboard, synthesizer, stylophone, and some Japanese instrument called a Tenori-on, which looks extremely fucking cool and I think Matt Bellamy needs to order himself one of those. JUST SAYING. Little Boots also plays the fucking laser harp:
That isn't her, btw. That's Jean Michel Jarre; this is the picture they have on the laser harp wiki page.
I swear to god, she's like the illegitimate love child of Matt Bellamy and Florence Welch. AND I LOVE IT. I love her. And I love literally every single song on this album. It is perfect. It is just a fantastic collection of pop and dance music, with some really thoughtful, weirdly poetic lyrics. I think, above all, my favorite thing about Little Boots' music is that while it's electronic and kind of lacking the variation of sound of "traditional" instrumental music (a guitar sounds different from a piano sounds different from a flute), she layers sound so spectacularly in her arrangements that I don't even care. Every little synthesizer has its own voice. It's so awesome. When you listen to the songs, try to listen past her voice and pick out some of the other synth lines - it's a really remarkable listening experience, imo.
Click to viewHOBO DANCE NUMBER. Gotta love it.
"New in Town" is the album opener. (This is actually the first time I've seen any of her videos; I don't often watch them for most artists, honestly. Maybe I've given up hope because most of Muse's videos suck, lmfao.) Boots wrote it about her experience recording this album in L.A. (where, presumably, she had never been before) and all the strange characters she met there. This jam is funky as hell (like many of the songs on the album are); I swear to god, every time that chorus comes on I just wanna bump and grind with someone. It only gets better from here, I swear; this song really sets the tone for the album, but in some ways, it also limits your expectations... which makes some of the other songs a nice surprise, particularly in the way their lyrics are crafted.
I didn't know you were a waterbender, Little Boots.
I think this song is about as close to mainstream pop Little Boots gets on this album. It's got some great hooks and the melody is really memorable (imo), and the lyrics are seriously clever as well. I like how she uses natural disasters - earthquakes, landslides, thunderstorms - to represent the bad times in the relationship she's describing. Some people on songmeanings.net have interpreted the lyrics to be indicative of domestic violence, but I always read them as more emotionally abusive:
How many countless nights I try my best to hide
Soon as you slam the door, my tears fall to the floor
[...]
Every little earthquake, every little heartbreak going unheard
Every little landslide, catch it in my hand, I won't say a word
Every time you hurt me, I know that it's working, making you mine
Every clap of thunder only makes me stronger on the inside
I thought of it more as hiding emotionally, hiding her feelings so he couldn't hurt them, and the door slamming wasn't threatening but just another sign of him leaving, checking out, getting mad but not caring. And it's coming to the point where she doesn't give a shit about his blow-ups anymore. All the yelling, the fights - the chorus shows, I think, that she's learning that crying isn't worth it because at this point, nothing he says or does even means anything anymore. He doesn't care about her "heartbreak" and she just "catch[es]" his nasty words in her hands before they hit her - like she finds a way to block them out. She's becoming stronger, she doesn't have to deal with this anymore. I'm just having a problem interpreting the "making you mine" bit. Like, every time he says something shitty to her and she can brush it off, she knows her method is working and she's the one with the power because he can't do anything to her anymore? And if she leaves, he's going to be a hopeless, lonely bastard? I don't know, guys. Let me know if you can come up with something better than that, rofl.
"Stuck on Repeat" is a little more tender and also another one of those beautifully crafted metaphors. I decided to include a few live performances, mainly because I think it was kind of boring in the last post to just include mp3 rips from Youtube, and also because I hadn't actually bothered to check out any of her live performances. And I really love this one. "Stuck on Repeat" is so much more striking to me as a live number than it is on the album.
Every time I try, every time I try,
Every time I try to break free
Then something comes along, something comes along,
Something comes along to intervene
My heart's skippin', skippin', and I don't know why--
I know every part
But every time I try, every time I try
Something comes and pulls me back to the start
I love how she literalizes the whole "stuck on repeat" thing with the construction of the lyrics (even more so in this video, where in the interlude at the end she totally pulls the broken record thing). And I love how she compares a relationship where she's out of control and trying to pull it together with a record that keeps skipping and repeating; the line "My heart's skippin' and I don't know why; I know every part" is so perfect. She knows how this is supposed to go, how it works, but she can't figure out how to go on. This girl's lyrics are so brilliant.
Cute-ass Princess Leia whatever hair omg I love her.
"Remedy" might be my favorite song on the album, just because it's so... you can totally take this song at face value and that's okay. I mean, it's about an ex or something who just won't stop bothering her (and clearly he was an asshole - words like "poison" and "paralyze" make that pretty clear), and she's just like, "FUCK OFF! I'm gonna go dance with this other guy. You can go shave your back now." It's just really ballsy and also... damn, who the fuck doesn't like to just dance it out? This song is so perfect for that, it's so groovy.
And when the music fades away, I know I'll be okay
Contagious rhythms in my brain - let it play
Get it, gurl.
This is my other favorite song, "Mathematics." By far the cleverest lyrics on the album. It manages to do the math thing without being too "me + u = tru luv~~" I like how she plays with the brain/heart thing - I picked that as the cut text for this entry for that reason; I just think it's a really cool line.
Don't know my Fibonacci or Pythagoras
But the only formula I know will work for us
Is that when we're together then the sum of our parts
Is far greater than what we added up to at the start
She points out the difference between two people as individuals together, and as a unit - somehow love makes you greater than just two people. ~THE POWER OF LOVE~ or some shit, I don't know. (me + you) > me + you? Clearly I have been working on too much algebra with my students.
I know! I know! It's another metaphor. I LOVE THEM, YOU CAN'T STOP ME. This one is really cute.
Remember to tune into my heart, wherever you are
My frequency starts when we're apart
I know that it's hard when things get dark
Relationships are like a long car ride with someone you love, but around the fifth hour without a pee break or a chance to stretch your legs, you start going a little crazy. So just remember... flick on the radio and tune into my heart. ♥
"Hearts Collide" is such a sweet jam. Some reviewer referred to it as "the best Kylie Minogue song never written," and I definitely see the comparison. I love the live version because it's much more of a dance number, it's more vibrant than the album recording. DAT BASS, OONTZ OONTZ OONTZ. (She dances so adorably, rofl.) It sounds so much better with the bass and drums, I just want to get in that crowd and dance. The lyrics are sort of cheesy and maybe a little over the top--
Baby, when our hearts collide
We're leaving the whole world behind
The planets and the stars align
Holding back the hands of time
--but sometimes you just need something a little less... thought-provoking, I guess, in a dance track. I'm down with it, anyway.
Little Boots, Hands ♥