The official line is that Atomic Kitten are taking time off mainly so that Natasha Hamilton can look after her young son, Josh. However, a year's sabbatical will provide a much-needed opportunity to repair the damage five years as Britain's top girl band has inflicted on their hair. After innumerable TV-friendly dye jobs, Liz McClarnon's locks are starting to resemble string, Jenny Frost's horror barnet could stuff a cushion, while the band mum has taken the sensible, motherly option of lopping hers off altogether.
However, their farewell (for now?) tour is less about coiffure than about cementing their position as Britain's most-loved Liverpudlians and modern pop's queens of the gloriously tacky outfit. They begin wearing flower-embroidered jeans and suspiciously bulging bustiers then turn up the heat with some underwear-flashing, baby-doll numbers, and make a tremendous bid for glory with skirts that are surely modelled on kilts worn by the Queen's hussars. The Kittens have the costume sense of peak Abba, although some of the songs have less life than Vera Duckworth's curlers.
Their set is still too laden with covers and schmaltzy formulaic songs. However, their most threadbare tunes are delivered so that the girls' voices sound like a 30-piece orchestra. When a "guitarist" lets rip a searing solo, a video camera zooms in on fingers that are barely moving.
Atomic Kitten are a textbook manufactured band. But their triumph has been assisted by a natural appeal. When Frost yells "Shut it!" to someone at the front, she displays the same Liverpudlian earthiness that enables them to sing the Bangles' Eternal Flame illustrated by images of what look like gas fires.
Whole Again is their one undeniably fabulous song, but the evening's triumphs lie in small touches, like McClarnon's tearful waves to the crowd. However, the girls' enthusiasm for Madonna's vacation-yearning Holiday is telling: even before the encore, the crazy outfits have given way to real life's regulation T-shirts and jeans.
· At Nottingham Arena tomorrow. Box office: 08701 210 123. Then touring.
