ATTIC GIRLS

JOY, aged 26, is highly sceptical. "I hear they're a cross between Shampoo and Alanis Morissette, leaning more towards Shampoo," she says, mockingly. We're leaning against the wall near the VIP room in Dublin's "premier dance club", the POD. And tonight it definitely is a matter of "invites only" at this media and record industry showcase gig for the new British act, Alisha's Attic. Ten minutes into the set, however, Joy is singing the praises of the Dagenham duo, exclaiming, "that is real rage, those women have been f..ked over by men and it shows. This is the sound of the 1990s. Rage. Rage. Rage!"

Joy may be over reacting but she's also probably right. At least, in terms of her last observation - a possibility substantiated as she gleefully recalls how Morissette, during her recent Dublin gig, let the largely female crowd "totally take over singing You Oughta Know and then, at the end of this merciless attack on a male exlover, shouted, "what the hell are you all so angry about?" Men, surely?

The Morissette connection has apparently led to "people going into record shops, asking for the new Alanis single, I Am I Feel, only to be told that it is, in fact, an Alisha's Attic song," according to Ailish Tohey, from Polygram, Ireland. But how much of all this is true how much is hype? Could it simply be that the record industry has suddenly realised that female rage sells and, indeed, sits at the soul of much of the music currently being created by women - from post Riot Grrrl bands, like Garbage, to a brace of solo singer, songwriters, such as Alan is Morissette and Aimee Mann?

Are we merely witnessing the manufacturing of pre requisite bands to exploit that market; to deliver a sort of rage by numbers? Or are such acts - rather than the more sanitised Eternal - the preferred female alternative to boy bands such as Boyzone; a vent, through which young women can express deeply held emotions, such as rage, and thus assert "girl power" rather than merely participating in male manipulated "girly pop"? (To paraphrase Emma from that other, relatively new, female band, Spice.)

Either way, the Alisha's Attic single, I Am I Feel, recently won the much coveted Music Week magazine's Single of the Week award and is expected to debut "in the top 15", according to Sian Thomas, from Polygram, London. (The single actually entered the British Top 50 at number IS last week.) "But don't judge them till you hear the album, which is pop, but with lots of layers of darkness underneath," she says.

THE album will be released in September, but, for now, we've moved into the VIP room, where one half of Alisha's Attic, Karen Poole, aged 25, is clutching a pint of Guinness and eager to dive into the interview.

So what about the observation that rage defines the music of Alisha's Attic and that this is "the sound of the 1990s", a la Alanis Morissette and other female acts?

"How we want it to be perceived is as two girls being totally natural, see through, no facade. There is nothing fake about what we do," she says. "In fact, we've been doing this for a long time. But for so many years we were doing other people's songs, wearing ra ra skirts and, basically, compromising ourselves. That started the rebellion, in terms of not wanting to be seen as just two more girls in "sexy" dresses, singing: `I love you, baby.'

"Yet, even though I Am I Feel is aggressive, it's not as though every song on our album is like that. Some songs actually say, `I adore you, you're the best thing on the planet', then the next song - as in I Am I Feel says, actually you're not. I hate you. You're taking me for granted. And that's more how life is, right? So what we do is a kind of balance, not just songs attacking men."

Karen pauses, sips her pint, quickly embraces a well wisher who was "blown away by the show", eyes up "a real hunk", then continues, picking up where she stopped.

"AS far as the Alanis Morissette thing goes, it's hard on two women like us.

I've got blond hair, blue eyes, so we're not expected to act that way, not allowed to express anger, or write those kind of lyrics, right? In other words, I'm supposed to be just a dolly bird. And that doesn't only apply to the music business, it applies to society. So if there is rage in my music it's against that kind of crap.

"It's the same thing, obviously with many women songwriters. But with us it's not really a feminist thing, as such, because I adore men! But there definitely are a lot of people out there who are threatened by the fact that we are two young girls who are not Shampoo, or whatever."

Karen laughs off the "Shampoo meets Morissette" comparison, adding that the relatively insipid pop music of teen bands, like Shampoo, is "fine, but not what we do." And what about the vitriolic post feminist anthems created by Morissette?

"She's another woman in this industry expressing, views some may see as threatening, but that's brilliant, isn't it?" Karen enthuses. Yet she herself is obviously feminist enough to know that it is sexist only to compare female singer songwriters with their female peers, As is Shellie, her 24 year old sister, who has suddenly joined us. "Most of our influences are men," says Shellie, who, tellingly, doesn't get to elaborate until her sister ("yeah I probably am the dominant one") finishes her point.

"I really wouldn't like us to get the label of being angry. We're just honest. Sometimes men piss women off and that's what we sing about, more than anything else," Karen says, before Shellie cuts across.

"Apart from what we're saying in the songs, the point is that we are, first and foremost, musicians, who have been into songwriting since our early teens. Because making music and being famous was all we ever wanted. Even in school, I told the career guidance teacher I wanted to be a singer. And Dad always backed us in this, even though we left home at 17 and live miles away from the family. But he, and they, know that as long as Karen and I have each other, we'll be alright.

"That's why the songs we write work so well. We have this kind of family vibe where we know what's right and if it's not, then Karen has no problem saying, for example, "Shell, that's really shit", in terms of my singing, which is great.

"We're actually telepathic," Karen interjects. "We have that kind of closeness that'll keep us going, no matter what happens."

But what if Alisha's Attic disappear as fast as they seem to have appeared? Can Shellie and Karen deal with that? After playing music and dreaming of fame for so long, is there now a sense of desperation in their dream?

"We're not desperate at all," Karen concludes. "If this doesn't work, we'll keep on writing songs because, as Shellie says, we love writing music. And I think people will be surprised by our album. Anyway, we're only in our twenties, so we've a long way to go before we give up. And we've come a long way."

In fact, one of the reasons the record company took to us was because we had decided, before we even met them, how we wanted to look, he photographed and present our music. In other words, nobody created us, other than ourselves. There's nothing manufactured about Alisha's Attic."