The UK’s favourite synth-pop princess Little Boots on Jamie Cullum, Phil Oakey and “that horrible little child off X-Factor.”

For anyone who has been living under a rock for the last year, a quick skip through the Little Boots phenomenon so far… Classically trained pianist Victoria Hesketh grew up in Blackpool. The 25-year-old cut her teeth singing jazz at wedding receptions, jamming in a punk band that only covered Blink-182 songs, plucking a harp in a prog-rock outfit and, dressed as a Blues Brother, performing “Gimme Some Lovin’” to Belgian tourists. Early flirtations with fame include a failed bid for Pop Idol at the age of 16 – “I sang Nina Simone’s “Birds Flying High” to a producer in a hotel room, he said no, I cried and went home”; and as a former member of the almost-ran indie band Dead Disco. Her best friend started calling her Little Boots after seeing the film Caligula – the Roman Emperor’s name is Latin for Little Boots; “I guess because I’m pretty small and wear boots a lot!” In February 2008 she started appearing on YouTube – sat in pyjamas on her bed with a keyboard – doing cover versions of everything from Girls Aloud to Joni Mitchell. Within a year she’d appeared on Later… With Jools Holland, signed to EMI, topped the BBC’s Sound of 2009 poll and, most recently, narrowly missed out on the Critics’ Choice Award at the BRITs. With her debut album due out this summer, it’s odds-on that the best is yet to come…

Describe your music in five words?
Electronic. Melodic. Escapist. Kinda Disturbing. Futuristic. Is that five?

What was the first record you bought?
Take That was the first album I bought out of my own pocket. Pretty good. I don’t have it anymore. It was on cassette. The first record I was bought was Kylie Minogue Locomotion.

What was the best Blackpool nightclub from your teen years?
There were only two vaguely alternative clubs. One was a goth club, which I didn’t go to. The other was kind of indie. It was called Jokes and I loved it. I used to go every bloody weekend. They used to play Stevie Wonder and Led Zeppelin and stuff like that. I bet I’d still love it now.

What’s your favourite YouTube cover you’ve done?
I really like the one of Wiley’s “Wearin’ My Rolex.” It was a challenge from a friend who didn’t think I’d do it. It’s really funny, I sing it wrong because I thought it was ‘babble’ not ‘bubble’ – it makes me sound southern. I had a bad cold that day anyway. I started doing them as a joke but people just started emailing requests and it snowballed. I’d like to do one of “Bizarre Love Triangle” by Depeche Mode. Is it Depeche Mode? No, New Order. I might do that next when I have time.

Worst gig to date?
As Little Boots? One I did in Newcastle – nobody turned up. I guess doing things like The Blues Brothers in a Belgian theme park is pretty up there. But that was character building. It was a 30-piece big band and we’d do a medley – everyone wearing shades. I had some very embarrassing dance moves… I hope there isn’t any video evidence out there! But if you can get up in front of a bunch of tourists in a stupid outfit and do that, then you can get up in front of anybody.

What was your thesis on Jamie Cullum all about?
I didn’t write a whole thesis on him. I mentioned him in it. It was to do with how he covers someone like Radiohead in what’s supposed to be a jazz style. Jazz is supposed to be about improvisation and spontaneity… he just comodifies those elements and turns it into this packaged version of jazz. That was my point really.

Which artist would you most like to collaborate with?
Phil Oakey from The Human League. I’m a massive fan – they’re great. Their record Dare is just brilliant.

Singer you’d most like to hit?
That’s a bitchy one… Eoghan Quigg, that horrible little child off X-Factor. He’s like a man-boy with a baby-face grafted on. But I wouldn’t want to actually physically hurt him because his big stupid squidgy face would look at me and I’d feel bad. But I’d like to stop him singing.

Without music where would you be?
Gardening. I’ve got a garden in London now! I’m not really into flowers. I love growing vegetables. I like the whole process from seed to edible produce. It’s like you grow this thing and it becomes a part of you.

If you could teach the world to sing… which song would it be?
“Mirrorman” by The Human League. That’s my answer today… it’ll change tomorrow.

Photography: Jon Bergman
Words: Will Alderwick

A full version of this article first appeared in Wonderland #18, Apr/May 2009

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Dave Portner, Josh Dibb, Noah Lennox and Brian Weitz met in 1992 at high school in Baltimore. In 2000 they formed noise band Animal Collective, changed their names to Avey Tare, Deakin, Panda Bear and Geologist respectively, and vowed to keep things fluid. Sometimes they wear animal masks. Sometimes they don’t. Usually they perform and record together. But not always – for their eighth and latest album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, Deakin has taken a backseat. The only constant in their music, in fact, is that it has remained steadfastly experimental – somewhere between early Pink Floyd tomfoolery, Talking Heads’ art rock and Euro dance pop. Geologist (“I did biology in college but a friend thought I was studying rocks and it just stuck”) – the one to be found standing downstage wearing a headlamp and twiddling knobs – sheds some light on planet Animal Collective’s new obsession with all things water…

What kind of animal is the new album?
Something that lives in a coral reef. Not exactly a fish, something a little more human – a mer-person.

What’s your contribution to the record?
I bring outdoor samples and field recordings to help create the environment of the melody. I made some just around the corner from where we recorded the album – kids playing in the street. The more scientific ones I find from other people. Like the underwater stuff I don’t have the means or the technology to do myself. This record combines the outdoors of the area that we grew up in, Maryland, mixed with coral reef and lagoons.

Where does the Merriweather Post Pavilion title come from?
It’s a venue in Baltimore, an outdoor amphitheatre. We liked the way the words sounded together. And it had ‘weather’ in it, which was important because we’d imagined pictures of weather patterns whilst we worked on the songs. Some sunshine, gentle rain, even some tornadoes and sandstorms but without the violent connotations.

What was your first pet?
A turtle called Teddy. I’m not sure who named him.

Which mythological figure would you like to be?
The sea god Poseidon because he can hang out underwater.

What are your most recent record purchases?
This 80s new-age record by Clare Hammel called Voices. The new Arthur Russell collection Love Is Overtaking Me. Some of Lee Hazelwood’s mid-60s stuff. A ballet by a Japanese composer called Tagi Ito. And some old Grateful Dead on eBay.

What’s Animal Collective’s worst gig to date?
We played a festival in Belgium at the end of a really long tour. We’d had too much to drink and no time to do a sound-check. We couldn’t hear what we were playing and after aborting two songs halfway through we just walked off stage and trashed some equipment on the way. That was a low point. But we did an acoustic set in the parking lot afterwards to make up for it.

How come Deakin isn’t going to be touring with you?
He recorded the album with us. We’ll work around his parts when we’re on the road. It feels really natural to us. It’s the way it’s been since high school. Some people felt like playing some nights and others felt like hanging out with their girlfriends. We established early on that not everyone had to be there to make music. You just make music with whoever is there. It keeps everything feeling really loose and that’s the way it works best for us.

Words: Will Alderwick

A full version of this article first appeared in Wonderland #16, Dec/Jan 2008/09

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I like the anarchic idea of coming from nowhere. But I think that’s probably because I had a very steady childhood.

I’m secretive. I like to think that no one knows what I’m thinking or feeling. I happen to be Jewish, but I don’t want to go round exclaiming and tearing my hair.

At 15 I went to the Central School of Art. I was the youngest there and can remember seeing a naked model for the first time. I rang up all my friends and said, ‘Come and see this!’.

Painters who use life itself will eventually reveal every facet of their lives. My work is purely autobiographical. It is about myself and my surroundings. It is an attempt at a record. I work from the people that interest me and that I care about, in rooms that I live in and know.
Through my intimacy with the people I portray, I may have depicted aspects of them which they find intrusive.

Half the point of painting a picture is that you don’t know what will happen. I sometimes think that if painters did know what was going to happen, they wouldn’t bother actually to do it. I hope people will be affected by my work but whether it’s adversely or agreeably I don’t care at all. I’m fairly immune from praise or abuse, but there are a very few number of people where what they thought would count a lot for me.

I’ve gradually worked longer as I’ve gotten weaker. Fading strength makes me drive myself harder. But I’ve never lacked staying power. With age I’ve become increasingly ambitious. It’s a fascination with the difficulties. I don’t like many hours to pass without working. Many people are astonished that anyone would sacrifice the possibility of comfort and what is thought to be an agreeable life to a life of uncertainty and loneliness, where you are engaged in an incomprehensible activity.

All the real pleasures are solitary. I hate being watched at work. I can’t even read when others are about.

The task of the artist is to make the human being uncomfortable. I remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt he was giving art what he thought it previously lacked. With me, it’s what Yeats called the fascination with what’s difficult. I’m only trying to do what I can’t do. There is no free will and the only real work you can do is on yourself. I paint the sort of paintings I can, not the ones I necessarily want to paint.

I think of great pictures, rather than great artists. There are very few painters where I like everything they did because it’s by them. Unlike Andy Warhol, who said ‘People go on asking about my works, they don’t realise that they are exactly as they see, there’s nothing behind them,’ I want there to be everything behind mine.

For me the painting is the person. My idea of portraiture came from dissatisfaction with portraits that resembled people. I would wish my portraits not to have a look of the sitter, but to be them. I didn’t want to get just a likeness like a mimic, but to portray them, like an actor. As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as the flesh does.

I did 200 drawings to every painting in the early days. I very much prided myself on my drawing. [But ] the idea of doing paintings where you’re conscious of the drawing and not the paint just irritated me. People thought and said and wrote that I was a very good draftsman but my paintings were linear and defined by my drawing… I thought if that’s at all true, I must stop.

I don’t use professional models because they have been stared at so much that they have grown another skin. When they take their clothes off, they are not naked; their skin has become another form of clothing. And I want something that is not generally on show, something private and of a more innate kind. I’m really interested in them as animals. Part of liking to work from them naked is for that reason… One of the most exciting things is seeing through the skin, to the blood and veins and markings.

What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince. Surely all good art is linked to courage, isn’t it? The only thing that’s interesting about art present or past is quality. The whole mystery of art is why good things are good.

Lucian Freud On Paper is published by Jonathan Cape on December 4. randomhouse.co.uk
Picture credit: Man at Night (self-portrait), 1947-48

Words: Will Alderwick

A full version of this article first appeared in Wonderland #16, Dec/Jan 2008/09

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