Reviewed by Phil Thomson

Welcome to Enid Blyton's "Famous Five decide to make a record". This is a self-confessed bedroom and living room job, and proud of it too. That's the good news. The rest has an air of unreality about it. The leading lady sounds like a precocious 14-year-old trying out on Saturday morning TV. What the support offers is nervy, forced, not quite getting on top of the top line. Almost every song is driven by low-energy rip-off - house, garage, shed at the bottom of the garden - and for padding, they have obviously left the radio running all night on short wave. It is finger-tapping exercise, laced with one or two predictably evangelistic ballads and embarrassing attempts at contemporary social comment. If you listen hard, the song-writing is structurally not bad at all, but the pick-n-mix production, the sheer naivity of it all is quite baffling. If you are going to do a Paula Abdul or one of the scratch masters, it has to survive the sophisticated ear of the average pop pundit. This just doesn't cut the mustard. A great deal of heart and absolutely no soul. Watch the cover price. I suspect a self-financed project with a distribution deal; Kingsway ought to know better.