Mini Viva: I Wish video

The success of Mini Viva's Left My Heart In Tokyo took a lot of people by surprise. It was by no means a bad song - but Radio 1's unwavering support was unexpected in a year when manufactured pop has been overshadowed by the home-crafted synth odysseys of Little Boots and La Roux.

It doesn't hurt that the duo are managed by Simon "OBEY MY COMMANDS" Fuller, nor that they're releasing Xenomania tracks during Girls Aloud's year off (although, according to Nicola, Left My Heart In Tokyo was an old hand-me-down from the sessions for What Will The Neighbours Say?)

But something about Mini Viva doesn't quite click for me. Like Miss Frank on The X Factor, they don't gel as a band. Take a look at their new video, I Wish (below). Frankee and Britt are in the same room, running through their lines and (largely) moving in the direction they've been told to - but it's like neither of them has noticed the other one is there. In that respect, it's a bit like watching two "actors" struggling through an episode of Hollyoaks.

Luckily, the song is pretty good, a hybrid of Call The Shots and a song that's not Call The Shots but still has that song's trademark melancholia, by a band who could be, but aren't necessarily, Bananarama or (at a push) The Sugababes. That's the first Sugababes, with the ginger one in, who are improbably maybe definitely possibly absolutely not reforming. Not the new Sugababes, who are still together despite general indifference and mental illness, although obviously an 11-piece band consisting of Girls Aloud and all the former and present Sugababes singing a song that mixed Call The Shots with a knock-off of Call The Shots would be pant-shatteringly amazing.

Mini Viva - I Wish

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