Nothing is quite as it seems. This IS a pop record. A young American girl with a smile that would have bowled Errol Flynn over goes barefootin' in a Parisian street, buys a second-hand polka-dot dress and sings about a boyfriend about to melt like an ice-cube in her Mint Julep.

Alternatively, she fantasizes about miniature bottles, why oh why, could she be naughtier than we thought? Or is she just thirsty? Meanwhile, the trumpets trumpet, Richie Thomas beats the side-drum and the violins whoop like a lark drunk on sunshine.

Then again, this is NOT a pop record.

Have you seen "Suspiria"? Do you remember this white ghost of a girl threading her way through a forest of menacing birches? That's "Sugar" for you, a suffocating nightmare of relentless beauty, a heartstopping race away from something we hope will never have a name.

Last, peace. The Pyrenees mountains, tremendously old, frighteningly young, a cloud away from the golden splendor of the Alhambra gardens, gypsy caravans and blinding lights of the Mancha plains. The promise of Spain, Bertrand's Arcadia, our own Samarkand, where dark-skinned travellers trade incense for a purse of exotic-looking coins. A world shielded from us by rock and winter, a world we can invoke as we disappointingly stroke the familiar mane of a gentle pony. Childhood, I suppose.

So April is a child.

But nothing is quite what it seems. Could it be that she really loved you, Mr. Clever? And what, or who, does she think of when the end-credits dissolve from the TV screen and the murmur of radio parasites wraps her in electrical snow?

April is a woman. A child. Blows hot, breathes cold, sparks and ashes, and that SMILE in her voice. Think of the toy you took to bed with you. Think of the words you sang in its ear: the very words and the very music that this record is made of.

Still, remember: nothing is quite what it seems.

Louis Philippe, Nov. 96