NEW GIRLS ON THE BLOCK

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

Imagine that the chirpy pop singers New Kids on the Block (now defunct) were all pretty, young British women. Hold that rather perverted idea and you've got the Spice Girls, an all-female pop-vocal quintet out of London. Their debut CD, Spice, has topped the charts in Britain and captured audiences in France, Italy, Japan, Australia and almost every other country where there are young girls and young boys who like looking at young girls.

Now the group has its sights set on America. Spice will be released in the States on Feb. 4, and a shamelessly bouncy first single, Wannabe, has already debuted at No. 11 on the Billboard chart, tying a record set by Alanis Morissette for the highest debut ever for a single by a new act, and is climbing rapidly. The group's relentless musical onslaught resembles the onrush of the half-humanoid, half-machine Borg in Star Trek. The Spice Girls, with their mix of semifeminist values (motto: "Girl Power!") and robotic dance beats, keep pushing forward, demanding that listeners love them, join them. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

The Spice Girls' career has the happy-go-lucky trajectory of a Mentos commercial. Geri (Halliwell), the two Melanies (Brown and Chisholm) and Victoria (Aadams) came together in 1993 after answering a newspaper ad for singers and dancers to form a new pop group. They soon fell out with their manager, set off on their own and recruited Emma (Bunton). The five started singing (often uninvited) at parties, record-company offices, anywhere they could get noticed. They eventually hired manager Simon Fuller--the man behind Annie Lennox--who signed them with Virgin Records.

In their videos (Wannabe is getting heavy airplay on MTV), the Spice Girls are the opposite of an early-morning aerobics program. One watches a workout show to get fit; one watches the Spice Girls because they are fit. All five are toned, energetic and attractive, though not overwhelmingly lovely. Perhaps it's because they are just shy of gorgeous that they are so popular: they are earthly beings, approachable, and could almost exist in real life, unlike, say, Christy Turlington. The Spice Girls range in age from 21 to 25. There's Mel B., with her curly hair and pierced tongue; cool, unsmiling Victoria; Mel C., with her dark locks and sassy nose stud; red-haired Geri, of whom old topless photos have turned up in those naughty English tabs; and blond "Baby Spice" Emma, who claimed to be 19 but recently held a rather indiscreet 21st birthday party.

On record, as vocalists, the girls are harder to tell apart. Only Mel B., whose voice has a bit of grit, stands out; the rest have bright, slight voices, more light than heat, more Wilson Phillips than En Vogue. It's also disconcerting that the Girls' accents disappear when they sing, only to reappear during spoken-word segments, like Eliza Doolittle forgetting her manners. It's as if they are so closely copying American pop music that their own distinctive qualities are erased. In fact, most of the songs on Spice sound like '90s hip-hop updates of funk songs from the '70s. Listen to the surging Say You'll Be There: the groove is penetrating, but the whole thing sounds suspiciously like an Earth, Wind and Fire song that's just on the tip of one's tongue.

None of the songs on Spice, from the slumberous ballad 2 Become 1 to the bass-heavy party jam Something Kinda Funny, come across as deeply felt; they all seem designed to amuse, titillate, ingratiate. Members of the group, however, beg to differ. "We don't try to please anybody," says Mel C. "What we're doing is what we want to do, what we really enjoy, and if people are receptive to it, then that's brilliant." The girls say there are positive themes in their peppy tunes. For example, Wannabe declares that friendships are more important than love affairs: "If you wannabe my lover/ You got to get with my friends." The unspoken messages Americans will probably get from this music are these: Hello, we're sexy British gals! Let's make music fun again! After all, with music like this, it's not the message most people notice; it's the messengers.

--Reported by Maryann Bird and Julie K.L. Dam/London