the veronicas - "everything i'm not" (from the secret life of the veronicas lp, available for purchase here.)

in brief : max martin presents twenty-year old australian identical twin sister lovers.

okay, not sister lovers, that might have been too good to be true. but! they were born on christmas day! (jesus christ!)

which either engages your bullshit meter or plays into your love of a band's mythobiography. and then you see they look this ...... and you've either closed this page or are willing to reserve judgment.

still here? good. b/c this is a fantastic little song. you might be sick of the max martin beat by now--tss-tss-THOPPP, a bit like the pumpkins' "1979"--from all of the times you've listened to "since u been gone," and all of the times you should've listened to the backstreet boys' "just want you to know," but, take heart, you can't sing "since u been gone" over this one! instead, it has a really appealing minor-key chorus melody and it's not nearly as dour as most radio rock records w/ minor keys feel they have to be these days. plus! it makes you want to jump up and down on your bed!

the veronicas acquit themselves nicely. they're a bit like the duff sisters, if they were a credible rock act, which will never happen no matter how many smiths records hilary listens to; they're also a bit like t.a.t.u. w/o the accents and psychosexual drama, though a chorus of "'cos the girl that you want / she's tearing us apart" raises an eyebrow (as does "because of you" on the bridge). somewhere, joe simpson is saying, "this is what i was going for," as he dyes ashlee's hair again while she quietly fumes over the picture of the girls w/ ryan cabrera on their myspace page.