Consumer Guide Album

Bananarama: The Greatest Hits Collection [London, 1988]
London postfeminists who appropriate girl-group epiphenomena affectlessly, to signify inauthenticity, they fare better with odious Stock Aitken Waterman synthpop than with the shallow Swain & Jolley synthsoul they started out with--where Leee Johns sounded dreamy wafting through that detached mix, these lucky lasses just seemed untouchably dreamlike. It's some kind of camp achievement that like the totally plastic singles group they play at being, they're equal to their most "meaningful" early material nevertheless, and some kind of camp limitation that their rilly greatest hits are "Venus" and "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye." I know, the Dixie Cups didn't have any discernible identity either. But they could sing. B+