REVIEW: Shampoo, We Are Shampoo (Food/Parlophone - Europe)

- Tim Mohr

Shampoo congealed when Jacqui, now 19, and Carrie, now 17, founded a Manic Street Preachers fanclub together. They put out a single, "Trouble," that sold in excess of 150,000 copies and led to a full-length album. "Trouble" is the opener on their debut album, which has hatched several other hit singles.

The album is unabashed trash-pop, collecting punky guitars, synths, sing-along choruses, and peroxide-blonde hair. Transvision Vamp offers a hint as to what Shampoo sounds like; kooky early 80s singles from Cyndi Lauper or Toni Basil might help as well. The infectious melodies and teeny lyrics make questions about musical worth totally irrelevent. It's too fun and catchy for such questions to occur to you.

Singing with undisguised cockney accents, Shampoo immediately cajoles you into singing with them on "Trouble": "Uh-oh, we're in trouble. Something's come along and burst our bubble." The verses consist of ranted accounts of how the girls missed the last subway and ended up staying out all night.

Shampoo is a female band, but as for their social politics (Viva La Megababes), "Hippy chicks are sad and super models suck. Riot grrls, diet girls - who really gives a fuck?" Shampoo on the charts: "It's a dirty old love song, saying `Hey baby, let's get it on.'"

Ironically, Shampoo's lack of pretensions works against them when it comes to their choice of cover songs. Their version of East 17's "House of Love" is the lowpoint of the album simply because all the other songs are better. Jacqui and Carrie wrote all the rest, and their junky guitar chords - reminiscent of fun, trashy bands like KISS or Slade or Gary Glitter - propel the songs with a giddy energy unmatched only by the East 17 cover.

The oddity of the album is the inner sleeve, photos of trash culture memorabilia presumably much cherished by Jacqui and Carrie. But the objects - an Incredible Hulk doll, Thunderbirds collectables, Jetson's candies, a Wonder Woman badge, you get the idea - are all from a period during which Jacqui and Carrie were still unfulfilled evolutionary impulses in their parents. Has the 70s revival reached such heights that kids who were only 2 or 3 when the decade ended go to yard sales to stock up on this junk? Is this record being consciously marketed to people who might actually have walked to school with a Happy Days lunchbox, or huddled in the basement listening to KISS 8-tracks? The thing is, We Are Shampoo is undeniably fun and really doesn't need to associate itself with that earlier heyday of trash in order to justify itself.