Bananarama get a good review of Viva from website teentoday.co.uk. Although they did make up a track “come into the night” which they say they loved. Attention to detail. Tut Tut.

Read it here or HERE

What with new girl bands on the block the Dolly Rockers, Paradiso Girls and Girls Can’t Catch plus the return of the Sugababes and Saturdays, we forgot to mention the comeback of one of the biggest girl groups with one of the best band names ever, the grandmothers of them all – Bananarama. (Well, they probably won’t like being called grandmothers and they certainly don’t look like them, so let’s settle for naughty big sisters or slightly shambolic aunts instead.) But can their latest album, Viva, compete with all these young upstarts?

The answer is a resounding yes. Viva sees Keren Woodward and Sara Dallin tackle electro-dancepop with accomplished results – and before naysayers cry about La Roux bandwagon-jumping, 2005’s Drama album saw them in similar territory, so there. First single Love Comes is as good, if not better, than anything the Saturdays have chucked out – an exhilarating electro romp with a chorus that leaves you panting for more. Tracks like The Runner, Dum Dum Boy (both like, totally massive), Love Don’t Live Here and Come Into The Night prove that when the Nanas are on form with this blissful breathless disco, they’re a formidable force.

Elsewhere, the very reason why so many loved Bananarama in the first place is lost – a sense of artless fun, from their shambolic style and public appearances back in their 80s beginnings through the later Stock Aitken Waterman frivolity to their even-now hilarious interviews. Autotuned to the n-th and falling victim to the froideur that often besets electro, the likes of Seventeen and Tell Me Tomorrow glide by leaving little impression whilst a cover of iiO dance classic Rapture is rendered utterly unnecessary by being no better than the original and bringing nothing new to the table.

However, other covers take well to being electro-ed up. Simon & Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence is gorgeously lush and possibly the only track that has a slight heartfelt quality to it, Bryan Adams’ rock standard Run To You is gloriously reinvented as a dizzy dancefloor dream and Fox’s S-S-S-Single Bed, though initially banal, soon slinks by seductively with a touch of the Nanas trademark cheek too. And let’s mention The Runner, originally by The Three Degrees, again as it really is magnificent.

They might be past their best, but Viva proves the Nanas are nowhere near their sell-by date either.