Preview: La Roux, ABC, Glasgow

Published on Saturday 14 November 2009 13:56

THIS decade began with Dido as the biggest British female recording artist, but it ends with that crucial position filled by not one but several far more interesting women performers: Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, Florence Welch and – perhaps most intriguing of all – Eleanor Jackson, aka La Roux.

La Roux is actually a partnership comprising the 21-year-old Jackson and the reclusive Ben Langmaid, who has been involved in the dance scene since the 1990s and is rumoured to be in his early forties. An equal partner in the studio, he doesn't appear live – that job is handled by a touring band – which means that, for most people, Jackson is La Roux. But it's actually a classic dynamic – the poker-faced musician and the gregarious singer – that recalls synth duos from another era such as Yazoo, OMD, Soft Cell and Eurythmics.

Meanwhile, Jackson, with her shock of red hair plus gravity-defying elongated sculpted fringe and outspoken views, is like a pop star from a more colourful age. You could imagine her on Top Of The Pops circa 1981-2 alongside Boy George and Marc Almond.

Like her predecessors, she is "very hands-on" about what she does, right down to the font used on her record sleeves. "I can't imagine doing it any other way," she says. "I'm like, 'Are other people not?'"

Instead of "auteur", however, some say "hauteur": they think La Roux is cold and distant, arrogant and superior, snootily looking down her nose at the rest of pop. Indeed, her team describe her image as "future regal", while if you spend time with her discussing the current scene, you come to expect harsh judgments of her peers. Take That are "gaylords", and The Ting Tings are brushed aside with an "I hate them".

"Maybe it would be better to say what you do like," says her keyboardist Michael Norris, backstage at a TV studio in Belgium where the band were due to perform Quicksand. "That would be a short conversation," Jackson replies. "I like Tears For Fears. See ya!"

She's hardly some nasty super-bitch, though. Really, Jackson is just a regular 21-year-old: opinionated and passionate about her likes and dislikes. She reserves special venom for the way a teenager like Pixie Lott is currently being marketed as semi-clad chav totty for lads' mags and is enraged by the suggestion that she's some peculiar alternative. "People don't even really know what they want. They go, 'La Roux, ooh, she's a bit quirky – I wouldn't dress like that.'" And yet she acknowledges that she has become something of a poster girl for alienated teen females who have warmed to her androgynous appearance and refusal to smile cheesily for the cameras.

In fact, she's really funny. She admits she will do anything to get a laugh, and has been that way since school when, as a dyslexic child, she would lose interest in lessons and make her classmates roar with outrageous remarks about teachers or celebrities. On tour, she's either swearing like a fishwife or indulging in the crudest sex-talk. She says that, the day before, a journalist accused her of being "closed" and "difficult to talk to", which she found bizarre given how forthright and friendly she is.

"How could anyone get that impression of me?" she wonders of her reputation for ice-maiden froideur. "I haven't got a clue. I can understand from the pictures but not from talking to me – maybe I've got the wrong impression of myself…"

She admits that she "didn't have a good time at school", that she was bullied for being different, not to mention fat. Not that her music is borne out of a desire for revenge on the perpetrators of her childhood misery. "It seems so long ago now that seeking revenge for it would almost make me feel dirty," she says. "I'm so past that. It gives them (her bullies] too much credit."

Far more impactful was her first failed love affair – it is common knowledge that the songs on La Roux's debut album were written to exorcise the bad feelings, anguish and self-loathing that resulted from an early relationship. But she's even got that out of her system now. So what's going to be the motivating force on La Roux's second album?

"Death," she says, straight-faced. "Death-fear." And with that, she heads off to wind up another curious journalist.

ABC, Glasgow, tomorrow. The single I'm Not Your Toy is out now www.laroux.co.uk

This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday on 15/11/09