Presumably, the album title is supposed to sum up the band — they’re famous and they’re always having rows — and, yes, that’s the public perception of the outfit. Yet surely an album title that reflected the reality of the Sugababes would be something more like Consistency and Quality Control. Not as immediately catchy, I’ll grant you, but this is a pop group that has continued to turn out commercially successful and musically interesting albums for eight years. This in a genre where, if you turn out three albums, each containing two singles and 10 tracks of filler, then head promptly for the dumper, you’re adjudged to be pretty much “legendary”. There are 14 tracks on Catfights and Spotlights, and there isn’t a single turkey among them; frankly, it’s hard to think of another pop act who put so much effort into the tracks that prop up the end of an album. Right up the other end is the first single, a reworking of Ernie K-Doe’s Here Come the Girls — or “that one from the Boots ad” — followed by a 1960s Motown pastiche, You on a Good Day, and a 1970s Motown pastiche, No Can Do. From there, we get a mix of bright poppy things (Hanging on a Star), old-school Sugababes R&B (Side Chick)and swoony ballads (Sunday Rain), a track that manages to combine elements of all three (Every Heart Broken) and an acoustic version of About You Now, with delicately poised harmonies, just in case you hadn’t noticed that they can actually sing.

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