Survival for artists in the 1990s, it seems, depends on the ability to re-invent. Witness U2 coming down to the dancefloor; witness David Bowie playing host to breakbeats. Now Scottish pop quintet Texas is treading that path.
Remembered possibly as a starry-eyed group along the lines of The Primitives and Prefab Sprout, last month the band emerged from a four-year hiatus with their fourth album, White On Blonde.
Sounding vastly different from past offerings - the last being Rick's Road in 1993 - the group have trekked through, and blended, various genres with ease.
One thing that remains unchanged, however, is the saintly voice of lead singer Sharleen Spiteri whose vocals are clear as crystal.
'For us it seems a perfect marriage to take soul music and mix it with hip-hop, dance or even trip-hop beats - because soul music is very intimate and sexy while hip-hop and dance are at the other end of the scale, very street and dirty,' said Spiteri.
'For the last two or three years snobbishness in music was really dropped in Britain. Before, everybody had to stay in their little space - if you play rock you have to play that. But a lot of musicians said they had to go somewhere else to find their music.' Another characteristic of the new album is the variety it offers - from grand string-laden workouts to dark atmospheric trips.
