With the corporate cleanup of the post-Napster world, the rise of pop star reality TV, the music industry's fetishisation of the pop production line and its steadily evaporating respect for any of the poor fuckers who actually buy records, the pop world in Japan and elsewhere is currently scraping new heights of sterility. Since The Spice Girls in fact, the charts have been a barren place, the joy and beauty of pure pop getting buried under a slew of drippy ballads courtesy of every boy band on earth, frightfully tasteful beats courtesy of everything that Timbaland touches and sickeningly desperate whoredom courtesy of that horrible woman who looks like Dee Snyder. Where's the fun? Where's the glitter? Where's the sugar? Where's the bubblegum?

Tommy February⁶, like The White Stripes and The Libertines, exists in a hermetically sealed world of her own and it's a word where perfect pop never died. The progression from her 2002 debut is a barely perceptible shift towards the darker things previously only hinted at. Where on her debut she cheekily chided "even if your babe is my friend, can you love me?" on "Hey Bad Boy", here she comes out and demands "ChOOSe mE or Die" with an alarming lack of punctuational logic.

In today's pop world where the best (and weirdest) bubblegum comes from the likes of T.A.T.U. in Europe and the Tsunku stable in Japan, the tinge of desperation brings an unpleasant, bitter taste to the mouth. As if the immense quantities of corporate cock they've been forced to suck can be somehow transmitted, via their breath, through the medium of your speakers and into the seeming safety of your living room. Tommy, on the other hand, delivers everything with such an air of nonchalance and studied cool that while the 80's cod-funk of tracks like "daNCin' baBY" and the disco pump of "sEpia memory" provoke comparisons with the Stock Aitken & Waterman production team, the knowing wink to the audience she is making puts her more in the ballpark of Duran Duran. If you're looking for cooler reference points, then elsewhere, as on the warm yet indifferent vocals of album highlight "ThE RoSe fragrance", she recalls Liverpool synth revivalists Ladytron.

The limited special edition reviewed here also contains a DVD featuring the hilarious and quite necessary promo videos for the three singles. "je t'aime, je t'aime" is pure 80's retro featuring Tommy leafing through her phone-book sized date book, getting bored, turning her telephones into cakes and feeding them to her cheerleader bodyguards. The best video here, "Love is forever", is as unsettling as it is brilliant. Tommy wakes up with a hangover and starts singing, the Tommy Angels (see review) burst out of her closet in the now standard cheerleader outfits, and for the rest of the video they all take dancing trips back and forth between her room and the closet, constantly viewed from a series of voyeuristic camera angles (through a half-closed door, a window, from under the bed, through a surveillance camera). It's like David Lynch filming an episode of Sweet Valley High. (Those of you who bought the Tommy Heavenly single will recognise the point where it segues into "Wait Till I Can Dream"). The last video, "MaGic in youR Eyes", is far too weird to describe here but it has breakdancing alien clones in it and is highly recommended. -Ian Martin, Mar.19.04

Tommy Airline