For the last decade the BBC's much-vaunted annual Sound Of - list has ranked the hottest new musical talents.
It's fun at the time, though for every Adele (2008) and Jessie J (2011), there's a Mika or an Ellie Goulding, artists who for one reason or another have failed set the world alight.
To that second list we could probably add Little Boots. Blackpool-born Victoria Hesketh won the award in 2009, released her debut album the same year and now, four years on, returns to the fray with another slice of easy-going dancefloor fillers.
At its best (on Crescendo, say, or Strangers), Nocturnes finds Hesketh and co-producers Andy Butler, James Ford and Tim Goldsworthy coming close to the beguiling majesty of Goldfrapp. But there's little else here that couldn't be filed under the term "blameless electropop": especially not Motorway ("Meet me on the motorway/We can drive away"), Broken Record, which is straight out of the Girls Aloud school of pop songwriting, and Satellite, which sounds like a early-Noughties Madonna cast-off. With Butler and Ford being the main men behind (respectively) Hercules And Love Affair and Simian Mobile Disco – both critically-acclaimed electronic projects – Nocturnes is a missed opportunity for an attention-grabbing return.
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