Wonderland: Shh, don't say "anyone remember The Thunderbugs"

A piece in the Mail's You magazine yesterday "introduced" Wonderland:

Fresh faces, high hopes and an Airstream trailer… Jane Gordon hits the road with Louis Walsh’s latest protégées on a video shoot in the Californian desert – and is charmed by the girl band that everyone’s talking about

Actually, hardly anybody is talking about them - this is already a relaunch of the band who were first spotted (again, not by many) on some godawful ITV2 programme about Louis Walsh and Kian Egan.

There was, back then, an "open audition" which somehow, out of the thousands who took part, managed to turn up Kian Egan's wife as one of the final members - what are the odds, eh?

Now, there's a struggle to try and get the band to sell some records without an unwatched ITV2 programme to help:

Louis and Kian (who co-manage the girls) have taken time to develop their sound –the nearest comparison any of them can come up with is the American girl group the Dixie Chicks – and with a major investment from their record company Mercury (who signed them in April 2009 and report very high pre-sales for their debut album Wonderland) they are being hailed as the biggest and most talented act to emerge from Ireland since the Corrs.

Really? Has Ireland got such a terrible problem that 'an album just outside the Amazon Top 50' become the biggest thing since 1990?

A clumsily manufactured Irish band who, if you struggled, you might say were a bit like a poppy country act? This is just B*Witched, isn't it?

There's something quite nice about the idea of a "girl" band with some members closer to thirty than thirteen, and who shudder - at this stage - at the very idea of wearing PVC minidresses. Sadly, though, I suspect either the innocence will disappear, or the band will.