If there's any policy on this paper - and there aren't many except, maybe, optimism over all - it's that someone who's recently written a feature about a band shouldn't review their latest LP; something to do with split opinions and fair comment and all that. 

Anyway, the more astute among you may have noticed that I've already waxed lyrical about Gene Loves Jezebel in a piece called "Band Of Gypsies" a few pages earlier, so why am I here bending your ear? Because there were no other takers, that's why. And that's exactly the sort of opposition GLJ face in their bid for the recognition I and a few thousand ex-goth girlies damn well know they deserve. 

But let's get off the defensive. Let's ignore all those who reckon the howl mutating into melody signaled the end of the twins' honesty and credibility. Let's turn a few people on. Let's pluck GLJ away from the Bauhaus back catalogue and wack them in a leopard-skin-upholstered lipstick cherry bomb Cadillac. Let's mention Adam and the Ants, Billy Idol, Debbie Harry, the Stones and the seed of new glam, which is surely coming to save us from drab, dead noise. 

Let's mention Transvision Vamp and Scarlet Fantastic and up rather than down and sensuality over brutality and gay abandon over self-consciousness and Hendrix over Joy Division. 

"The House Of Dolls", in case you haven't guessed by now, is GLJ's fruition, the album last year's "Desire" hinted it could be. If, lyrically, the single, "Motion Of Love", "Set Me Free" and the silly schoolboy, range-rolling ballad "Every Door", rely too much on naiveté and the notion that, just because the old farts know all the cliches, it doesn't mean the young frillies and fillies won't be moved to organism anyway. James Stevenson's chrome stellar guitar grooves so greasy and easy and high on "20 Killer Hurts" and "Suspicion" that the best of Blue Oyster Cult blasts to mind. 

Some there are, still steeped in the past who will argue that, if GLJ are Welsh, why do they sound so American? Well, it's probably because that's where they're accepted and, at root, behind all theory, it's still all about the material and spiritual freedom attainable through wielding a guitar and wailing. "The House Of Dolls" is an easy record to ridicule if you're hung up on any ideology other than that pop should be expansive and flamboyant and free and fun. It's also an easy album to love if you get squirmy over dual vocals chafing and caressing, over records sounding slick and yet sort of thrown together by accident. 

Only those jaundiced with extreme prejudice needn't bother to get dressed up and ready for GLJ. The rest should just get this, open up and combust. 

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