By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK: ****

TRACKLIST: Really Saying Something; Cruel Summer; Robert De Niro’s Waiting; Venus; More Than Physical; A Trick Of The Night; I Heard A Rumour; Love In The First Degree; Only Your Love; Preacher Man; I Could Be Persuaded; Movin’ On; Last Thing On My Mind; Every Shade Of Blue; Take Me To Your Heart; Prove Your Love; If; Crazy; Move In My Direction; Look On The Floor; Feel For You; Love Bite; Love Comes; Love Don’t Live Here; 17; Extraordinary; Baby It’s Christmas; Now Or Never; La La Love; Stuff Like That; Looking For Someone; I’m On Fire; It’s Gonna Be Alright; Favourite; Masquerade; Forever Young; Running With The Night; Cruel Summer (3am Mix); Feel the Love; Supernova

Keren Woodward and Sara Dallin have been a duo as Bananarama for the last 33 years of their 44-year career and so this curated album finds them choosing 10 tracks from each of the 4 decades of their career thus far.

• Read on for reasons including how this album reminds how they’ve written some of pop’s finest moments across 40-plus years

The Smiths split in autumn 1987 and while the suburban sixth form we were headboy of was mostly in mourning we were playing Bananarama’s joyful Wow! album on the common room boombox years before we would officially come out.

Siobhan Fahey would leave the band soon after – to be replaced by Shillelagh Sister Jacquie O’Sullivan who left in 1992 – returning for an original line up tour including a gig at the Eventim Apollo in 2017 of which we said: ‘There’s also flashes of just how well they all get on and the banter is at times so funny the show could in fact be one long French and Saunders sketch with the best soundtrack ever. For example, Rough Justice is introduced as a protest song with one of the band quipping (such was the quick fire volley of gags, we couldn’t hear exactly whose dry note it was): ‘Don’t worry, it’s the only one.’

We 1st saw Bananarama live at the old Wembley Arena and wrote: ‘We were there at the old Wembley Arena for the first Bananarama World Tour in 1989 but founder member Siobhan Fahey took no part in the 40-plus gigs.’

Thinking back to that gig and it’s amazing that it came together as well as it did because the band had toured little in the run-up to it although they’ve since treated us to many opportunities to see them.

We would see them occasionally live between 1989 and 2017 at the Eventim Apollo including a reunion with Fahey at London’s nightclub Heaven as support in London’s Hyde Park and headlining at Clapham Grand but reviewed them next at Omeara in 2019.

We said: ‘In Stereo, the now duo’s 11th album and 1st new material for a decade, currently sits in the top 30, their best performing long player since 1987’s hits-packed Wow! We’re shy(boy)ing away from awarding this 5* because it all felt a little too intimate and hot in a packed venue under a railway arch but we love that they’re trying something different including playing Glastonbury this year.’

In 2022 we saw them at London’s Lafayette and said: ‘We love how the album Masquerade evokes current artists like The Weeknd and Jessie Ware who are drawing on the past to make some of the most thrilling music of the present and it’s a revelation to hear almost all of that album in full tonight alongside some of the band’s best loved work of the duo years.’

Listening to Glorious brings all our Bananarama memories flooding back and reminds us that their popularity may have ebbed and flowed over the last 40 years but this is an album that reminds that they’re still capable of penning some of pop’s greatest moments.

If pushed to pick a favourite era it would have to be those youthful WOW! memories but Pop Life‘s aspiration at developing their songwriting is illustrated brilliantly here by the Rolling Stones-ish Only Your Love and Madonna house of Preacher Man.

Can’t wait to feel the love with them again at those Palladium shows in April 2024. Glorious by name and glorious by nature.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy Bananarama
• Have you seen Bananarama live before and what did you think of them? Tickets
• Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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