MICE ... BECAUSE I CAN

TOP marks, really, for the conversion job. Give our lass credit for hoiking herself back up, only slightly cold-bloodedly, in Lush-style, new kinky boots and Britpop panties. If your memory (or goth denial, since I doubt all Mission record buyers simply vaporised) doesn't extend far back, you'd never see the joins.

In a nutshell Julianne Regan of All About Eve wistful-hippy-goth fame returns with the same crew - albeit replacing Tim Bricheno with Tim McTighe, who's been down the record shop - in a new-for-last-year thing. And not badly, up against your Poshes. Of course it hasn't quite got the overbright sass of Britpop since Regan's speciality was, and still is, wilty, breathy winsomeness, and this bands favoured approach is clearly musical lushness instead of sonic sneer. When Mice fail, it's only for trying too hard: the swaggering, noisy, over-fiddled-with "Mat's Prozac", or the squeaky jerkiness and butter-wouldn't-melt mouees of the "The Milkman".

When they succeed - a nearly regal, Beatle-bedecked "Blue Sonic Boy"; a gorgeous "Miss World" utterly unrelated to Hole - it's hard not to come round. And there's nothing to scare the horses: a swooping "Bang Bang" could be Sonya Aurora-Madan, minus the steel and intelligence, and "Dear Sir", despite the conceptual improbability of being influenced by Sleeper, belongs on the radio next to Belinda Carlisle.

No reason why she couldn't do it again. As long as there's money. Lots and lots of money.