Album: The Saturdays, On Your Radar (Fascination/Polydor)

Andy Gill
Friday 25 November 2011 01:00 GMT
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The all-too-familiar keyboard vamp which opens On Your Radar is about the clearest white flag that could be waved as regards originality: this is an album that seeks not to separate itself from the herd, but to bury itself so deeply in its midst as to be virtually invisible.

It's identikit McPop, mechanically-recovered musical pablum refined so no aberrant trace of individuality is audible. Which is a shame, since the individual verses of "My Heart Takes Over" suggest there may be an emotional, interpretive element available in some of the girls' voices; but the jackboot choruses stamp out that kind of humanistic nonsense before it gets too far. Instead, the rote expressions of devotion, (frankly risible) and regret are organised into a vacill-ating cycle of submission and reproach that offers scant opportu-nities for imaginative connection.

DOWNLOAD THIS My Heart Takes Over

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