Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 13/11/06
Label: Universal

Two spectres loom large at this retrospective feast. Siobhan Donaghy, vulnerable ginger heart of early singles "Overload" and "Run For Cover", and the inimitable and much-missed Mutya Buena. It feels weird seeing new girl Amelle Berrabah on the front cover taking the credit for fifteen belting songs of which only one features her unfamiliar vocals. It feels like watching a fresh-off-the-bench Theo Walcott hoist the Jules Rimet trophy with David Beckham. But such is the brisk business of pop.

It's when they sing about "skipping school" ("Overload") that you realise just how far these songbirds (especially remaining founder member Keisha Buchanan) have come - from GCSE-dodging tykes to poised ambassadresses for the best of British R&B, lining-up with Elvis and Stevie Wonder on that TV ad for BBC Radio 3. Since forming in 1998, in fact, they've seen off Bill Clinton, William Hague and the millennium bug, and witnessed the dawn of a "Pop Idol" era whose shallow contrivances makes them look as quaintly and authentically put-together as a barber's shop choir (the band's core met at school aged eight and formed the band at 13).

This best of is a deserved lap of honour: in eight years of conscientious pouting and warbling they have scored more top 10 singles than the Spice Girls, All Saints, Destiny's Child and Bananarama (and therefore are not obliged to include watery second single "New Year" and recent, lowest-ever charting effort "Follow Me Home"). The biggest highlight is also its most historically interesting: chart-topping 2002 comeback "Freak Like Me" (their first release after the departure of Donaghy and being dumped by their original label) happened almost by accident.

Starting life as an underground Richard X mash-up, it only landed in the 'Babes' in-tray after Adina Howard refused permission to use her vocals. Without that one shake of the head, this compilation might not have existed. Musically, there's little here to add to the largely positive feedback that that has rewarded the girls' slick, sassy modern soul. Bass lines bubble like a rich soup. Harmonies fuse together as softly and malleably as Playdoh. Hem-lines, both real and metaphorical, rise for the dancefloor numbers and slide way down for the ballads.

On the words side, however, lyrical malfunctions abound. There's a persistent "come again?" quality to lines such as "It's a one way ticket to a madman situation" ("Overload") and "My sexy ass has got him in the new dimension" ("Push The Button"), while "I want sex on the beach / And I don't mean on the rocks" ("Easy") strikes a rare tacky note in a band whose image has always been one of aloof and unobtainable alpha-femininity. Where to now? With an ageing fanbase and recent singles failing to live up to the band's mid-career peaks, you do wonder how long Amelle will stick around.

    by Anna Britten