CD: Stooshe - London with the Lights On

Stooshe are a manufactured London girl band. They were put together a couple of years ago by shrewd ex-girl-bander Jo Perry, a self-made London studio engineer and a songwriter for, among others, Peter Andre. Despite this prosaic, business-savvy backstory Stooshe emanate a sass that’s likeable. Unlike, say, Little Mix, there’s a certain garrulous, sweary bounce to them, a sense that perhaps they really are friends and really are having fun.

On top of this, the influence of their (comparatively) easygoing attitude to body shape and appearance in a teen/tween market overrun with homogenized lollipop-heads can only be a good thing.

Perry wrote all the songs on London with the Lights On with producers Future Cut, the duo behind multiple hits for Olly Murs, Lily Allen, Wretch 32, Shakira and others, but the trio of Courtney Rumbold, Alexandra Buggs and Karis Anderson are the ones who lather on the attitude. They bring everything to gobby life over a sound that’s Motown on electro-pop steroids, The Supremes by way of a Saturday night in Romford. It’s hard, however, to imagine Florence Ballard or Diana Ross singing “If you really, really, really want to stay in my pants you’ve got to do better than that,” as Stooshe do on the recent single “Slip”.

The other Top Five singles are here too, the hymn to bad boys, “Black Heart”, and the wonderfully saucy, chatty “Love Me” (“Hey diddle diddle, my cat needs a fiddle”!). The album is full of libido and rudery, although it’s good-natured and cheeky rather than sleazily playing to the Lynx-doused Nuts denominator. The lyrics throughout have playground/nightclub smarts and Stooshe’s upbeat outlook on fun, dodgy dates, playful sex and occasional skankiness successfully hauls the listener into their hook-laden, radio-friendly, wide-girl world.

Watch the video for "Slip"