One To Watch: Mini Viva

Mini Viva quickly became a priority booking for Xenomania. Getting on the train down to Kent on a weekly basis, the girls wrote, sang and demo-ed enough material to make absolutely sure that they had found the Mini Viva sound. One of the first off the block was Left My Heart In Tokyo. “It’s a brilliant song and as soon as we’d recorded it we knew we had our sound,” says Frankee. “It worked.”

The rollercoaster groove of their debut single is technicolour disco anthem in the making. A brilliant collision of happy melody and sad lyrics, it calls to mind the first time you heard a Wannabe or Baby, One More Time. It is pure pop gold-dust. The chorus is a pop dream, one listen and it’s lodged. Already, French remixer of the moment Fred Falke has leaned it out into a MySpace sensation. Hen parties and men parties are about to conjoin as one under the Mini Viva sonic umbrella. 

To help facilitate the stone-cold bond that they’d started to forge at their first audition of their own accord, they lived together for six months in a flat in central Manchester. The city turned out to be a revelation to Britt, as Frankee showed her round. They shopped (“we’re high street with a bit of vintage and a secret love of the top floor of Selfridges” says Britt), found a favourite bar (Panacea) and made a secret exchange with one another to let their pop dreams loose. They began gigging in the unlikeliest of venues. “Really grotty little rock clubs, exactly the place you wouldn’t expect to find pop. We figured if we could do it there, we could do it anywhere.”

So here we are. The five track sampler showcases what to expect from  their debut album (due November 09). Britt’s vocals are given a powerhouse showcase on the yearning slow-jam Emotions of Love, already one of the girls favourite songs for the album and a tantalising promise of what they can do when the music shifts down in pace. Say What You Feel connects with the girls’ love of bluesy soul and adds another killer chorus to their repertoire. Hooked sounds like it has been lifted straight from the soundtrack of an 80s Brat-pack movie and given the full 2009 bounce. And stand out and potential next single I Wish is an instant classic: the story of a tragedy of a love just out of reach set to an immaculate beat - the sound of dancing your heartache away.

For the charming duo, this is already shaping up to be a sterling opening shot. Excited girls? “Excited?” says Frankee. “Are you kidding?” adds Britt. “We are ecstatic.”

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