At the moment the smart money is on the Shop Assistants to wave the flag for all that's good outside the mainstream. Getting them to talk about it can prove to be a problem. Martin Aston did the cajoling.

It was rumoured that the NME had to interview The Shop Assistants twice in order to extract enough 'quotable' information from the collective conversation whispers, whereas I had wanted to follow up a stilted, stubborn pub table tete-a-tete with a quick phone-in resumé (in the meantime the group had signed to new indie-major distributed label Blue Guitar) and was quite relieved to hear that the press office couldn't squeeze even two of them into one phone booth before my copy deadline caught the last train to Clarksville.

"We're probably a difficult band to interview" singer Alex sighs in a swoon of understatement, "because one of the main things about the Shop Assistants is conflict. We're all very different, but I don't think that's a bad thing. I think it's very productive. So far it's been our advantage..."

So Scotland's newest family favourites argue more than they truly confess; a conflict of their ideals and motivations against a conflict of melody and noise should give us our words-worth anyway.

Did somebody just shout let the music play?

THIS IS THE(IR) MODERN WORLD

David (guitar): "I think we're more original and exciting than 99.9% of all known bands around. I don't mean to say we're not influenced — we're not something like John Cage or Captain Beefheart that's totally out there but I just think as regards excitement and originality..."

"I think we're exciting but I don't think we're original" Alex interrupts.

"But even with The Sex Pistols" David replies. "Who's original apart from really out-there people. I don't think anyone has ever sounded like us... or ever will. The guitar is like Joey Ramone, the drums are a bit like Bobby Gillespie (ex-Mary Chain) but I mean the whole way the thing goes through and goes together is original."

Laura (drums) enters the fray with "I think the guitar's like The Buzzcocks or The Undertones..."

"Naaaaahhhhh..."

And so on. Surely they can all agree why The Shop Assistants warrant front page features and Great White Hope tags.

"Because we're different and we look nice" offers Alex. Exasperated, I wonder if they can be unoriginal and yet different.

"I think the things in which we're different" Alex demurely says, "are not necessarily the musical things."

NO SELL OUT

If the Shop Assistants can take a naive, adrenalin-soaked nervous-and-shaky collision of pop between The Ramones, The Buzzcocks and The Shangri-La's up to the very, very top, then they'll certainly be the first, and that would make them different. This is an alternative pop fanatic's ultimate wet dream, although I'd harbour The Shoppies' unashamed lack of technical gleam and cosmetic professionalism will never usurp Madonna's calculated airbrush fantasy, despite the presence of three individually photogenic women. No, The Shoppies don't sell success — social, economic, sexual; even "Papa Don't Preach" saw Madonna defiant; even her triumph of the will over hard-labouring Dad was a success of independence, a happy ending — but the archetypal dog-eared, youthful right to be different, to be downwardly-mobile in this upward-spiral decade, to be irreverent and independent without a trace of jumble-sale chic or ruffian image up their sleeves. With these three girls — there were four, even better, but twin drummer Ann left amicably before the second single — The Shop Assistants could easily be a Fuzzbox-with-brilliant-pop-songs if they chose to, but instead they choose to be considerate and sensitive and innocent and courageous when they could be sniffing out the way to make some comfortable money. I haven't heard a Shop Assistant telling anyone to Go For It during one of their peaky, patchy live sets.

The Shop Assistants can be all of these things, even all at once, which doesn't make them all that different, true, but there is something quite alluring about them - a certain period charm perhaps, the period being the one in which one can make bloody great mistakes but still rise up, er, triumphant. There are the obvious visual keys; Alex's naughty Raybans, David's ripped jeans, Laura and Sarah's diminutive presence behind their respective drum and bass, their collective concentrated stage expressions, the same aura of under-rehearsed charm, like a youth club band... like, we're not in control of this. And there's the conflicting but sublime marriage between fast noise and sharp melody and the way the wobbly wall of out-of-tune instruments suddenly slip into a jetstream where the tune is surfing above the metal-and-shells sound... and after the music has died down, there are the lilting lyrical concerns which drop out of the conversation if you poke hard enough.

What The Shop Assistants will at least implicitly tell you to go for is to go out and see bands and not lie around "thinking oh, isn't it terrible to be on the dole, isn't it terrible being a student or isn't it terrible the job I'm in'."

Alex continues David's rallying call: "I do feel it's important if people come together, then you can find people who are like you. You discover that you're not on your own. That's extremely important."

SOME CANDY STALL TALKING

Maybe The Shop Assistants are different because they have such wonderful arguments and say such wildly opposing statements; this is naturally refreshing, and it does give the what-was-it-like-with/are-you-like-The-Mary-Chain conversation.

So, the theory of The Shop Assistants is...

"World domination" says Laura.

"We're all basically different and have different reasons," says Alex. "A lot of it is that it's really good fun but a lot of what I wanted to do was with the communication aspect."

They all agree interviews are good to get across ideas because "you can't get everything across in songs and often people are either too shy or embarrassed to come up and ask what you feel and think about other things." Is it fair to ask what the songs are about then?

Alex: "Unrequited love."

Laura: "That's what we all think!"

It dawns on me that The Shop Assistants are serious about the questions and then frivolous with the answers.

David: "We don't write jokey songs. We write about things that affect us, whether it's falling in love with someone or whether it's a political thing, or whether it's something you see in a film." (The first EP's "Switzerland" was based on 'A Farewell To Arms', escaping the Nazis and all that. Not a lot of people know this about The Shop Assistants).

Alex: "Things that happen to you, things that you want, things that affect your thinking." Later she gets serious: "I think everybody should be socialist, feminist and vegetarian" which sparks off any bout of in-house dissent. "That's just my personal viewpoint. My prime reason is political but I don't want that put across as the band attitude.

"We don't write songs about the dole queues and that sort of thing though, not because I think it's a bad thing to do because a lot of other people are doing it, but it's more the case of the 'personal is political'."

"I feel it would be pointless for us to write a song like The Redskins' 'Kick Over The Statues'" David frowns. "What the hell does that mean? It's stupid."

Alex: "It's important to write a song where the meaning is directly obvious if you feel strongly about something."

TOP OF THE SHOPS

So let's not beat about the bush. The Shop Assistants are another — albeit alchemically spot-on — car-crash of sixties and seventies garage ideas and ideals, which is hardly the rivetting channel Britain's independent eighties should be following (if you want modernism, go burrow under Test Department or the Bow Gamelan Ensemble or Cabaret Voltaire). The Shoppies don't threaten or dismantle or overthrow in the process of their unfurling — they'll all too subdued, introvert and uncertain for all that — but both the "Shopping Parade" EP and the "Safety Net" single are brilliant shards of rough-diamond pop, shuffling in silver, a bag of high-velocity Phil-Spector-on-pocket-money produced fireworks with the odd floating, lush breeze ("Somewhere In China" and "It's Up To You"), Alex's waterfalling voice scaling tunes as delicate as spider's webs. And they write better, neater 'songs' than The Mary Chain, but the latter would never try on stage what turns out to be an embarrassing, clumsy cover of Motorhead's "Ace Of Spades" as a punky-pop joke.

No, all that's different about The Shop Assistants is their right-place-at-the-right-time feeling; punk's streamlined touches with a pop fragrance, a revitalised encouragement to D-I-Y any 'ole way, especially with three girls encouraging their sex (The Clash should have sung 'no Ari-Up, Polystyrene and The Raincoats in 1987') to get up and use it, especially with these three ladies not wasting any valuable time thinking of image to increase appeal, and appeal to improve the condition of their music.

Yes, The Shop Assistants might not be articulation itself, but the impact is heartfelt.

David: "I think people will look at us and feel inspired and happy, and make people fall in love with one another... and make people-buy drinks hah hah!"

Alex: "I think that's disgusting! We don't make people fall in love with one another."

"Oh come on, it's not like that... I find it exciting when we play and I think if I was watching a band like us who I'd like to see and I was standing next to someone, I'd feel so happy and they would too.

"I can't imagine people lying back pathetically listening to, uuurrrggghhh, The Shop Assistants. It would be more the jump-up-and-down thing." Permission to fall in love.