When Little Boots finally appeared before her public, it was not with a bang. Her first British show of the year took place more than a month after she was voted most likely to succeed in the BBC’s always prescient Sound of 2009 poll, a short support slot for one of the mediocre indie bands her brand of glitzy electronic pop is supposed to be killing off. Blackpool’s Victoria Hesketh needed to play more than six songs to commence a real changing of the guard but this glimpse still gave some truth to the media’s insistence that solo women with keyboards will lay waste to all before them this year.

It may be Lily Allen’s doing, who sits at number one in both charts this week wit
h her predominantly electronic new sound. More likely, the thinking goes, nobody liked the recent Razorlight and Snow Patrol albums so we must crave the opposite of scuffed boys with guitars.

Welcome, then, Lady Gaga and La Roux and Little Boots, who brush their hair and won’t wear jeans and may as well be from another planet. Little Boots, however, may end up appealing to the largest numbers because she straddles both worlds.

She has roots in both DIY music (as a former member of Leeds synth-rock trio Dead Disco) and pop (she is not embarrassed to talk about her failed teenage audition for Pop Idol). She may have worn a sparkly dress here and thrown the right sexy shapes but she can also be found all over YouTube, in footage singing cover versions at home in her pyjamas.

Home-made in space, she has neither the intimidating aloofness of Goldfrapp or the personality vacuum of Kylie. What she does have are tunes born to be radio favourites, from the interlaced blips, growling bass and ice queen vocals of Mathematics, to Stuck On Repeat’s racing Donna Summer melody. The songs she played here sounded strong enough to withstand the backlash that inevitably accompanies runaway early hype.

With no more London gigs scheduled and no proper debut single planned until May, she seems in no hurry to capitalise on our willingness to crown her this year’s disco queen. But she did suggest, with this all‑too‑brief show, that the wait will be worth it.