Roux alert

ANOTHER month, another new female artist.

Fresh on the heels of Little Boots and Lady GaGa – with Florence And The Machine and VV Brown still to unleash their debuts on us in the coming months – comes La Roux.

Anyone who thinks they don’t need to hear another electropop- singing twenty-something, however, would be missing out on something truly special.

Breathing new life into the synthesizer-powered pop of Eighties pioneers such as Yazoo, Human League and Eurythmics, is La Roux – who is 21-year-old Elly Jackson.

Mention such expectations to Jackson, though, and she goes from confident and outspoken to nervous worrier in the blink of an eye.

“At the moment every day is a bit different, some days I feel good and others I feel stressed,”

she says. “I just want to do my best, and I’m so happy the album is out now. We have been working on it for five years.”

The “we” refers to fellow songwriter Ben Langmaid. But as he has no desire to appear on stage or do any promotional work, Jackson is well and truly the face of the outfit.

“Some days I think, ‘How did you get away with not doing any interviews?’,” she says, laughing.

La Roux roughly translates from the French for “red-haired one”, a nod to Jackson’s flamecoloured, highly-coiffed mane.

“My mood all depends on how tired I am,” she continues. “I think definitely over the last few weeks I’ve been asked about pressure and I just say, ‘I’m fine’, but I had a moment recently where I was like, ‘Maybe I do feel a bit pressured’.

“Not so much about the album and the pressure of doing well, but the pressure of what this job involves.”

Jackson then explains how she constantly worries about letting people down or getting ill and not being able to perform.

She recounts a particularly harrowing night where she got so worried about the prospect of losing her voice and having to cancel some scheduled gigs that she couldn’t sleep, and lost her voice as a result.

“It’s just not acceptable to do an okay gig, it’s all got to be the best it can be, so I’m freaking out about not letting anyone down lately.”

Her second single, In For The Kill, reached the No 2 chart spot, and follow-up single, Bulletproof, debuted at No 1 and her debut album also went to No 2 in the chart. Had a certain King Of Pop not passed away that same week, it’s an absolute certainty the album would have hit the top spot.

“We were taken aback by that success,” she says. “When you hear you’re No 2 in the charts, it’s great, but you can’t feel it.

It’s just a fact, and it’s very hard to feel a fact.”

Jackson and Langmaid met via a mutual friend about five years ago and after getting to know each other they began recording her folk songs, which reflected her parents’ love of the likes of Nick Drake, Carole King and Neil Young.

These songs failed, so they put away their acoustic guitars and plugged in the synths.

“It’s been building for such a long time, and the music has changed a lot too, so it hasn’t felt like it’s been the same baby for the whole five years.”

Earlier this year, Jackson supported Lily Allen on tour.

The jump from 200-capacity venues to small arenas and town halls was easier than expected says Jackson, who is the daughter of former The Bill actress Trudie Goodwin.

“I loved that tour, loved it,”

she sasy. “It’s easier to relax when it’s not your tour because people aren’t hanging on your performance or judging you. It’s so much easier to mess about on stage every night.”

As well as performing to big crowds each night, she also learnt a few lessons from Miss Allen about how to react to fans.

“There would be big crowds outside the stage door each night and I would see Lily outside signing autographs for an hour or so,” she says.

“That sort of attention has to be a good sign, it means people like your music and they’re interested in what you’re doing, and fans are the people who buy your record, they come to your gigs and make your career. You just have to turn up and say hello. It’s not a big deal.”

Jackson also tasted the less desirable side of fame and had a few brushes with aggressive paparazzi photographers.

“I was in London the other week, getting into a cab and two photographers stopped me and said I could either get out of the car and have my picture taken, or they were going to follow me home, so of course I wasn’t going to give them a picture because I don’t want to court that sort of attention. They then followed me home.

“It was like being in a James Bond film – a really bad James Bond film, without any gadgets to get rid of them, just me in a cab being followed by these really aggressive photographers.

They’re only doing their job, but God, get a new job!”

■ La Roux’s self-titled debut album is out now, the band tour to Newcastle University Student Union on Saturday, November 14. Box Office: 0191-239-3926 or unionsociety.co.uk laroux.co.uk