200 k/mh In The Wrong Lane

From the Singing Nun to Aqua, the Smurfs to those ketchup women, Euro pop has never been short on the slightly odd marketing concept. Even taking these predecessors into account, the teenage Russian lesbian schtick of T.A.T.U. is the particularly bizarre end of the wedge. Whether the duo of Lena Katina and Julia Volkova are genuinely lovers is, by this point, surely irrelevant – this debut album has already done big business in the States and is showing signs of doing the same the world over. The cynics will mutter something about sinister pop svengalis and the fact that Trevor Horn produced the whole thing only adds to the theory, but you can’t deny that he still knows how to construct a solid (if slightly dated) wall of pop sound. When he’s given the material to work with, such as ‘Not Gonna Get Us’ and single ‘All The Things She Said’ the result is not that unappealing, conjuring up images of an Eastern European Shampoo. Much of the songwriting is just piss poor, however, and none of it as good as their cover of ‘How Soon Is Now’ (yes, THAT ‘How Soon Is Now’). The lack of ideas results in a paltry eight tracks, with three remixes, two versions in Russian (presumably to prove this isn’t a joke) and – hey what do you know – a CD Rom of that saucy video to make up the numbers. Coming to a Top Shop near you soon.