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She's the style-conscious, eternally cool daughter of Sting and Trudie, who's exploded onto the music pages with little more than a handful self-boosting demos and a hipster-friendly single to her name. "I like to think it's my music that got me here and nothing else" she tells Q.

In a recent interview, Eliot Pauline ''Coco'' Sumner, nowadays travelling under her band name I Blame Coco, stated that "talking is not my strong point, but if it helps to sell records...".

Now, merely wishing to sell albums as opposed to being destined to explore your creative abilities might be prerogative of a cynical multi-million global superstar, but for a nineteen-year old introverted debutant, this might be perceived as slightly baffling, arrogant, and as a slap in the face for artistic vision. Well, at least she's honest right?

But she's partly correct. Talking is not her strong point.

As Q meet up with her in a North London pub ahead of her performance at the New To Q Sessions, the stick-thin but undeniably beautiful singer seemingly wishes to slowly sink into the floorboards as quietly as possible. Frequently fiddling with the buttons on her top, as if it can never cover her up enough, she talks softly, ever so often abandoning a sentence mid-air only to gaze into the table. ''I like to keep myself to myself'', she says. We're not exactly surprised.

- The whole magazine thing goes hand in hand with what I do, but I wouldn't choose for it to happen, but that's the way it is.

What she does, it has to be said, is a whole lot of 'magazine things', given her other career, as a model and part-time actress. With her face suddenly appearing on the covers of music mags as well as the more style-orientated ones, how does she feel about becoming an icon?

- You have to sacrifice so much for being an icon. Being followed by photographers everywhere..people see it as being something great, when it's not. And me being a private person, I don't really want to get used to it. It would be easier if I did, but I think it would change me.

Being a model, the daughter of what one broadsheet writer described as ''one of the most eminently slappable celebrity couples on the planet'', and good friends with the omnipapped Pete Doherty (''we didn't go out'' she assures us), the life of the beautiful people is somewhat one of her fields of expertise.

Do you ever feel your looks have had something to do with getting a record deal?
- I wouldn't call myself ugly, but I don't think anyone's comfortable with the way they look, everyone's a bit insecure. But I like to think that it's my music that got me here and nothing else.

Her music then, is so far limited to the clever and hooktastic Caesar, which, with no little help from Sweden's foremost pop-pixie Robyn, pushed her to the front of pop-conscious minds. But with her debut album finally completed, what can we expect? Punkdisco apparently.

- I'm really happy with the album, it took a long time to get there, experimenting with different sounds and direction. I ended up taking inspiration from Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode, The Cure...that kinda sound and then modernised it.

Live however, I Blame Coco sound suspiciously like electropop, with Coco and her band turning the New To Q venue into a scene from Coctail. She even dances like it's the 80's.

She seems content even though a smile is still nowhere to be seen. ''I feel at home on stage'' she said earlier, ''If I had it my way, that's what I want; just play music, sell a few records, play live...''.

And that, of course, is she how she intended it in the first place. It's not baffling, not arrogant, nor is it a slap in the face of artistic integrity. It's just Coco.

Words: Brand Barstein

12:26 PM | 03/02/2010