United we stand...

It's the season of reunions. First Take That, now All Saints. Daniel Bardsley on the girlband's new album.

Amid all the hype about British boyband Take That's reunion, it has been easy to overlook the fact that that another former teen favourite group has also been on the comeback trail.

All Saints, who in the late 1990s were often billed as the new Spice Girls, got together again in the closing months of 2006 with aims of achieving success second time around.

The reformation of the four-piece UK girlband, made up of Shaznay Lewis, the chief songwriter, Melanie Blatt and sisters Nicole and Natalie Appleton, followed a familiar pattern.

After the band's split in 2001, all former members tried out solo careers or, in the case of the Appleton sisters, a duo career, but none really made much of an impact.

So with cash reserves possibly running dry, and with Take That showing how lucrative reunions could be, joining forces again seemed the obvious thing to do.

However, take a listen to their new album Studio 1 and you quickly realise that these four are doing far more than just cruising along on automatic pilot in order to boost their bank balances.

Some excellent songs

The new self-penned disc is full of attitude and boasts some excellent songs, not least the lively opener Rock Steady, which was a UK top three hit.

Chick Fit, set to be the second single, is a fun, light-hearted track, while On and On has echoes of the band's wonderful Pure Shores, which featured in the Leonardo DiCaprio film The Beach and is often regarded as All Saints' best song.

Several numbers, including Hell No, seem to have an almost anti-melodic quality to them that is actually quite attractive, while others, such as One Me & You, are irresistibly catchy in a conventional way.

Personal favourite

My favourite track, and one of the few that is not co-written by the highly talented Lewis, is Flashback, which has a fantastic snare drum backing and wonderfully sassy lyrics.

Perhaps the biggest surprise about this album, which sees the four girls sharing lead vocals, is how poorly it has fared in the marketplace. It only scraped into the UK top 40, which must have been a crushing disappointment, and as a result it seems likely to have knocked on the head any hopes that All Saints' reunion could become permanent.

That's a real shame because this record shows that the girls still have far more to offer than some of their younger rivals.

- The writer is the travelling bard of Gulf News.