We Are Shampoo

SHAMPOO: “We Are Shampoo” (EMI)

“WE COULDN’T get a cab cause we ain’t got the money.” Jacqui and Carrie are two English teenage girls who can’t sing, can’t play and look great. Pissed off with being too skint to get taxis home, they formed a band, gave it a terrible name, and headed straight for the charts. The result is something of an unholy cross between two of the Eighties’ worst bands: Strawberry Switchblade (blood-red lipstick, Barbie-doll dress sense) and Sigue Sigue Sputnik (packaging, self-promotion, ultra-hype) – in other words, a giant media scam, and a very successful one.

If I was a thirteen-year-old girl, I’d probably love Shampoo, but as I’m not, I don’t. I actually vomited while listening to this album. Last night’s bottle of whiskey obviously has to shoulder some of the blame, but Shampoo were the icing on the cake, so to speak, the spark that lit the fire. Like a cuppa with five spoonfuls of sugar, it’s all too sweet. Shampoo have sensibly decided on mindless bubblegum pop as their chosen genre, and they’re semi-competent at it, filling all their songs with fuzz guitar, cheerfully inane lyrics, cutesy-cutesy-coo vocals that make Kylie sound like Janis Joplin, and inoffensive pop melodies that float in one ear and out the other without leaving a trace. All the tracks might come across as superficially catchy, but without the heavenly, seductive vocals that made Blondie so wonderful.

The lyrics are incredible. Things like: “We are the last teenagers/In the front pages/We’re going down the escalator/We’re blond-haired teenage terminators.” This searching, penetrating verse is taken from ‘Viva La Megababes’, a hit single they thoughtfully wrote about themselves, wherein they admit to making a play for the Smash Hits market: “We’re the latest teenage dreams/On the front of all the magazines.” This is what happens when you let two teenage girls loose in a studio.

The standouts, and I use the word loosely, are the energetic ‘Delicious’ and the winning ‘Dirty Old Love Song’, a track so dumbly catchy and infectious it actually deserves to be a hit, despite stupid lyrics: “Dirty old Whitney’s gonna know/She ain’t the only one/Dirty old Mariah says her heart’s on fire/What a phoney one.” I also like the closing track ‘Saddo’ because of its vitriol, spite and general fuck-you attitude, and because it vaguely reminds me of the Fall’s ‘C.R.E.E.P.’ The same aggression redeems ‘Me Hostage’ on which Jacqui or Carrie invites you to “Suck me and spit me out/The way you always do/Kill me one more time/Or any time you want to”. With pleasure, honey.

We Are Shampoo is a mildly entertaining, but completely irrelevant, record. I heartily advise you not to buy it, but if you must, don’t listen to it on an empty stomach. I’ll see you later; I’m going off to practise voodoo on my niece’s Barbie dolls.

• Craig Fitzsimons