Sometimes artists can arrive just too fully formed. That certainly seemed to be the case when 19-year-old Liverpudlian singer-songwriter and electro auteur Holly Lapsley Fletcher, AKA Låpsley, recently unveiled her buffed and scrupulously tasteful debut album, Long Way Home.

The record is an immaculate masterclass in the strain of blanched, spectral R&B that now appears to be de rigueur for all artily inclined electronic artists in the wake of the successes of James Blake and the xx. Purportedly a breakup album, it laments its maker’s loneliness and heartbreak while appearing not to have a musical or emotional hair out of place.

Thankfully, Låpsley cuts a far more visceral and formidable figure live. Statuesque in black, she initially emits a surprising gothic cool, although that soon evaporates when she addresses the packed crowd in broad scouse: “I dunno if you’ve noticed, but I ain’t shaved me legs.”

Musically, she weaves beguiling spells over simultaneously lush, pristine beats and sumptuous programming. In contrast to the muted murmurs of her album, she possesses a powerhouse vocal, belting out the self-lacerating Falling Short and the accusatory Tell Me the Truth with a pitch-perfect gusto worthy of her world-dominating labelmate, Adele.

She is a skilled producer, with a winning trick of lowering and layering her voice until she is performing a male-female duet with herself over the electro twitches and glitches of Station. Operator (He Doesn’t Call Me) could be a great, lost Supremes B-side; Hurt Me boasts the wounded defiance of a classic soul siren. Beneath her perfect surfaces, Låpsley has a lot going on.