³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

This is of couse total rubbish, both genres are equally unlistenable and boundary-pushing and tend towards a certain level of generic content, due to being vaguely poorly-defined outside a few, very specific perameters.

Technically, then, Cascada should have held no fear for me. After all, they at least didn't spend ten minutes going NNNN NNNN NNNN NNNN SPOG SPOG SPOG SPOG THUD at any point during the song. Nevertheless, during 2006 I found myself feeling very panicked that anyone could hear me listening to 'Everytime We Touch' and indeed that I could hear it myself.

Eventually, of course, I came round to the whole idea and quite happily sat there sniggering at the fact 'Miracle' contains the line "you cheated on me from behind" and the sheer weirdness of the 'Everytime We Touch' library riot video. The extremity of Cascada's dedication to melody stopped being pants-wettingly fearsome and eventually it made them one of the more exciting things I'd discovered since, well, Steps, for my ex-rocksnob brain.

What's even better, though, is that this is a cover of a Patti Smith song. Beloved of rocksnobs, and pretty much everyone else, she's also written some of the catchiest, most balls-out melodic songs ever, this one definitely included (and yes, we know it's a co-write with Bruce Springsteen).

'Because The Night' is a masterpiece, an untouchable sort of work, which of course made it all the better that Cascada were about to throw all subtlety to the wind, butcher it in the eyes of muso snobs everywhere and make millions of kids go absolutely mental over it. It would be literally amazing.

That was how I imagined it, anyway. It was a beautiful imagining. Then I actually got hold of 'Perfect Day,' the band's second album and I watched this beautiful thought slowly crumble.

OK, there is nothing technically wrong with this (other than 'everything' in the eyes of many Patti Smith fans) and millions of kids probably have gone absolutely mental over it but there is something so, so disappointing about it, for me.

Where there was an obvious chance for the band to pull out every ridiculous stop here, they actually played it ...well, 'safe' isn't generally a word I'd associate with Cascada but it seems like there's been a retreat from their original style. Where I'd imagined a solid rave beat blaring beneath Natalie Wossname's most obnoxiously unsubtle vocals, it actually seems to be attempting a level of class, which simply does not work.

Whatever genre the band fall into - they're a bit too hard to be straight eurodance but not quite mad enough to be happy hardcore proper, at least not until Styles and Breeze have put them through the bosh-o-tron - they really can't afford to back away from their roots, and those roots consist of a bloody loud beat, a massive melody, and bit with a horn. As soon as they start messing around trying to make a semi-faithful cover of a Patti Smith song, then they seep from 'terrifying' into 'mediocre'.

It's just not... big enough or something; a degree of subtlety/sensitivity to the original song remains and that just isn't going to cut it, as soon as you stick a europop aesthetic anywhere near it. This ends up sounding like a kind of poor remix, rather than a stonking, audacious hit on its own merits.

Worst of all, it is not even a little tiny bit scary. Bah...

Download: Out now
CD Released: August 4th

(Hazel Robinson)