Twilight of the pretenders

Album : Dangerous And Moving
Artist : T.A.T.U.
Label : Interscope
Rating : **1/2 out of *****
Standout tracks : All About Us

T.A.T.U, Russian duo of cuties Julia Volkova and Lena Katina, was manufactured in the first place to take the direction of mid- career Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera even further, an electronic-driven rock with girl-on-girl attraction.

To lend credibility to their publicity stunt, the team of producers behind T.A.T.U. decided that the first assignment for the duo was to cover the Smiths' How Soon Is Now, an anthem for those whose sexual orientation is misunderstood.

It was a huge success. For the moment T.A.T.U was the new sensation. The hype was believable, until their true sexual orientation was revealed.

In T.A.T.U.'s latest outing, Dangerous And Moving, such a marketing gimmick consequently had no bearing and the group decided to pick up where the moribund Spice Girls left off.

Never mind their tongue-twisting English pronunciations, Volkova and Katina sing the way Sporty Spice and Baby Spice crooned their most saccharine-saturated tunes.

The music also never goes far off the track of what the Spice Girls manufactured.

In How Soon Is Now, T.A.T.U. could somehow give jagged edge (or is it the Doppler effect of Johnny Marr's original riff?).

But each song in Dangerous is dangerously formulaic, with all hooks being the same, and in between the vocal and the sonic arrangement there seems to be a gaping vacuum.

Neither of them are dangerous and moving. -- M. Taufiqurrahman