Låpsley sees you. She sees your tired ideas, your pop mythology 30 years past its sell-by date; sees you peering past her for the man at the mixing desk. And the prodigious 19-year-old, Southport’s most prominent post-dubstep auteur and yachting enthusiast, is calling you the fuck out. “You wouldn’t ask Caribou if he was a singer,” she told the NME last year. “He’d be like, ‘No, I’m a producer and a writer and I sing in my tracks.’ I’m more than just the face at the front of a band.” No one asks James Blake who produced his tracks, but they still ask Grimes. What Låpsley shares in common with both artists, whichever way you paint it, is that she’s also a pop star.
Matthew Neale 