Album of the week: Grimes, Visions 4AD

She deploys that frothy early 90s funk in Circumambient, with her beautiful falsetto trilling over the top and putting an adolescent shimmer on the songs that is simultaneously enchanting and mildly disturbing.

Colour Of Midnight openly lifts the Prince beats from When Doves Cry, as if the past 20 years had never happened. On Skin it is the sound of Elizabeth Fraser being asphyxiated over the sparsest electro pulse, but the Cocteau Twins reference is even stronger in the bewitching Know The Way. She also recalls Madonna’s Minnie Mouse vocal moments with Genesis and Oblivion, that tremulous purity immediately sullied on the twisted and mildly thrilling Eight.

Elsewhere, Boucher explores the opposite end of the pop barometer, oohing and aahing through Vowels = Space And Time, while Symphonia IX could be Boney M doing Sanctus from the soundtrack to Lindsay Anderson’s If.

Contributions from boyfriend Majical Clouds, aka Devon Welsh, plus Doldrums and Jay Worthy add street cred and complement her sugar sweet scattiness.

Genres may be mashed up, but Boucher’s synthetic soul shines through the static to make this essentially a human musical statement. An entertaining, diverse album that’s soothing and slightly scary.

Rating: ****

Download this: Eight, Know The Way