Bananarama: 'Viva'

Isn't it fab having Bananarama back? Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward may be twice the age of most girlbanders, but they're twice as much fun too. In recent weeks they've shared their views on everything from pre-Photoshop pop stardom, ("If you had a big fat face, you had a big fat face and that's the way it was"), to gigging ("Our shows are all slightly different - you never know who's going to forget what"), to why they don't envy Madonna ("We'd have to give up drinking and smoking and all the stuff we like").

Of course, hitting the interview circuit necessitates having something to promote - unless your name's Christopher Biggins - and in Bananarama's case it's not another Greatest Hits, nor an '80s nostalgia tour, but a brand new studio album. Viva, the duo's first long player since 2005, finds them signed to Fascination, the home of Girls Aloud and The Saturdays, and teaming up with Ian Masterson, a producer whose CV features quite a bit of Geri Halliwell and quite a lot of Dannii Minogue.

The result is a record that could make Prince Philip fancy a boogie at G-A-Y. Viva started life as a covers project before Dallin and Woodward rediscovered their songwriting mojo and three of these remakes have made the final tracklisting. Their take on iio's 'Rapture' is a bit pointless, but a vocoder-heavy version of Fox's 'S-S-Single Bed' is suitably slinky and a romp through Three Degrees' The Runner' is an unexpected album highlight.

Elsewhere, Viva intersperses electropoppy club bangers with robopoppy midtempo cuts. The surprise is how contemporary most of it sounds. 'Love Don't Live Here' tips its cap towards Freemasons with its mock-operatic vocals and dramatic strings; 'Twisting' is all Middle Eastern rhythms and Kylie-style whooshes, and the Hi-NRG thump of 'Dum Dum Boy' would do the business on any recent dance-pop album. Current single 'Love Comes' is a good indication of what to expect – like plating up a couple of chipolatas with some pulverised potato, it's not terribly original, but boy does it hit the spot.

Lyrically, Viva doesn't feature anything as ambitious as 'Robert De Niro's Waiting' or as memorably daft as 'Love In The First Degree'. Couplets like "Take me to the heart of the city, where the people are pretty" would sound ropey coming from Girls Can't Catch, let alone two women who can claim writing credits on some genuine pop classics. But this, like the album's lack of originality, doesn't stop Viva from being terrific fun. Almost as fun, you suspect, as a night on the tiles with Bananarama themselves.


> Click here to read our recent Bananarama interview