Mercury
Pop, 1998

The delightful Poole sister’s followup to their brilliant and catty debut Alisha Rules the World may have under-performed in terms of sales, but Illumina is a more polished effort that retains much of the wicked humor that makes these girls fun.

From ballads like The Incidentals, Going Down, and the moving Air & Angels to groovy upbeat tracks like Wish I Were You, these girls still find time to sharpen their nails to scratch out the eyes of a few bad ex-boyfriends. Indeed, lyrics is always one of Alisha’s Attic strongest points.

In Wish I Were You, they profess hatred at a beautiful, glamorous woman adored by millions even while sulkily wishing that they could think from her brain. The tables are turned in Are You Jealous?, sure a paean to ex-boyfriends everywhere with its gloves-off cattiness. Barbarella is a frantic piece about high life, and Dive In is a brilliant gem about the mysterious allure of femininity (check out the orgasmic ah-ah-ah‘s in the background).

They claim to be schizophrenic chicks in Air & Angels, alternatively adoring the weird pesky creatures called men and making punching bags out of them. It’s fun. While it lacks wistful gems like Air We Breathe or the catchy kitsch of I Am, I Feel on their debut album, but it manages to capture the ups and downs of relationships with two doses of quirkiness and five doses of kookiness.