HOW much attitude makes an album work? It’s not an easy trick to pull off. Too little and you fluff your lines by sounding meek; too much and you end up as So Solid Crew, never a good thing.

Hertfordshire pop-lover Charlotte Aitchison’s debut sometimes illustrates how easy it would have been for bravado to overtake tunes, but the 20-year-old has just about hit the necessary middle ground attitude-wise, and that helps to make True Romance an impressive, and intriguing, launch-pad.

Aitchison has thoroughly road-tested these tracks before packaging them as an album, through extensive touring, EPs, mixtapes and blogging, and it’s testament to the strength, range and confidence of her writing that they still sound fresh.

Nuclear Seasons is the sound of a more focused Gwen Stefani, while the likes of Robyn, Grimes, M.I.A. and Neneh Cherry are all in there somewhere in a fine six-track opening burst. Having Ariel Rechtshaid at the controls helps: he does synth-heavy, 1980s-style bomb-pop as well as anybody.

True Romance could have been derailed by a horrible mid-section of tough-girl, boy-berating filler, but Aitchison turns it around in time with the doomy Black Roses and How Can I and closer Lock You Up, a track even Siouxsie or a young Madonna might have been pleased with. In a world of Bieber and ‘1D’, at least somebody under 21 is coming up with pop it’s OK for those of us who passed that mark some time ago to like.