With their new single set to storm the charts, we meet LUSCIOUS JACKSON on a tour of New York and try not to mention the Beastie Boys.

"Do you consider yourself sexy?" smirks Gabby Glaser, guitarist, singer and songwriter with New York's incomparably playful, all-singing, all-dancing Lucious Jackson.

For the first time in its life, The Maker is nonplussed. Erm, well, uhhhh... in our capacity as representatives of our readers we do. Sure. They're all very sexy. Ahem.

Too evasive, and Gabby's not having any of it. Just to show The Maker exactly whose turf we're on, she treats the swarming crowds outside NYC's celebrated Flatiron Building into a prime piece of Brit-baiting. "Da yoo like yaw bum?" she leers, pisstaking your correspondent's London ways with super-Cockney intonation. "Is it a firm bum? Don't need a really firm bum."

"Have you heard of this new machine called Assmaster?" chips in lead singer, bassist and songwriter, Jill Cunniff. "Well, we are the Assmasters of rock!"

"We come to ass you!" howls Gabby. "We've always been the Assmasters, baby!"

"Is the Assmaster the one that what's-her-name endorses?" muses drummer Kate Schellenbach, quizzically scratching her head.

"We endorse it!" cackles Jill. "You know, that infomercial we did? The one that airs at 12 in the morning?

"You know," she squels again, "the commercial!"

THE commercial may well be all you know, but it wasn't for the Assmaster. It was for Gap (or, as the Americans have it, "The Gap"), and it featured Luscious Jackson playing "Let it Snow" in Santa hats, freebie clobber and... bugger all else. No models No slogans. No yellow puppet Just Luscious' contagiously confident elastic hip-pop music and buckets of free airtime. Bit of a coup all round - except that, for a group so indelibly connected with cool, Gap did seem a bit of a rubbish choice.

"Oh, The Gap's OK," insists Jill, as we stroll past Madison Square and the even cackier clothing stores surrounding it on a tour of the girls' hood. "Besides, we got a load of free stuff! I'm wearing a Gap top right now." And very nice it is, Jill. Maybe their stuff's better over here in the States.

"You'd be surprised. Besides, when I saw those other ads, the ones with LL Cool J and Missy and Aerosmith, I really didn't see it as endorsing The Gap. I saw them almost as a little advert for the band. Anyway, I guess a lot of people in Britain probably came across us for the first time on that ad, right? It was, like, everywhere."

It was indeed. So, any message for those new, Luscious Jackson virgins? "Hmmm," she ponders. "Just dive in, baby. Just expect a good time!"

Kate offers her own message. "We're glad, mad, sad.. ." ". .. Been had!" sniggers Gabby. "All the 'ad's."

If a braces-wearing, nonprescription-glasses-sporting advertising executive were to come up with a Lucious Jackson ad campaign, chances are the slogans "Sassy!", "Feminist!" and "Beastie Boys!" would dominate your screens. Now, that's getting to be a somewhat tired cliche but, surprisingly, LJ are happy to run with it.

"Sassy?" smiles Kate. "Yeah, that's cool. We had a friend who said 'sassy' in such a ridiculous way, we learned to enjoy it! 'Those plaaaaarstic boxes are so saaaarseeee!"

"And Beastie Boys?" yips Gabby. "Love 'em! We don't mind people talking about them. It's a mutual appreciation thing."

"They're like our little brothers," adds Kate, and original-line-up Beastie herself. (She left at least partly because "Licensed To Ill" was originally going to be called "Don't Be A Faggot".) "Yeah, they're our bros."

"Horovitz is like a little, bitty doggie!" giggles Gabby. "He's the best."

"But Mikey is kinda like the big brother," says Jill. "He was very helpful, teaching us to navigate the world of big business."

And, indeed, signing Luscious to his Grand Royal label, bless him. OK, well how about "feminist"? Surely one of the cliches rankles? Uh-uh, that one scores a unanimous "Right on".

"People seem to think 'feminist' is a dirty word," shrugs Gabby, "and it's really not. 'Underarm odour', on the other hand-now that's a dirty word!"

SINCE their last, landmark album, "Fever In Fever Out", Lucious Jackson have slimmed down to a three-piece, losing keyboard-player Vivian Trimble -either due to her increasing reluctance to tour or, as Jill has it, because "she couldn't stand the sight of us without our make-up on. Shit, all we had to do was groom!" Or even, less probably, because "she couldn't deal with our flatulence".

Thanks, Gabby.

Anyway, since the last album, the three-piece Lucious Jackson have bided their time drumming for numerous tribute bands with their Lunachick ex-bandmates (Kate), cleaning their house while listening to just about every record ever made (Gabby), and...studying opera singing. Sorry, opera singing?

"Yeah!" yells Jill over the screech of several thousand police sirens. "It was a lot of fun."

Surely you're far too thin to sing that stuff!

"No! It's nothing to do with weight -that's just a way for those guys to eat as much as they want 'Well, I have to guzzle this cheesecake cos my voice depends on it." But I learned a lot doing that, especially going to this workshop and watching all the senior master pupils at work. It's very intense, very involved."

Nothing at all,then, like Luscious' own music. If you want a typical reaction to their funkily bubbling pop, you can't top Gabby's description of the behaviour of shoppers confronted by an in-store airing of one of their old singles, "Naked Eye". "They started moving their hips," she boasts, "in a very sensual way." And, if you want a comparison, you could do worse than Blondie, at least in terms of their similar sheer scope and style. Appropriate enough, then, that Debbie Harry herself should lend some guest sneering to the ultra-bitchy "Fantastic Fabulous" from LI's deliciously colourful new album, "Electric Honey".

"Well, we've been compared to them since day one," nods Gabby, "and of all the people in the world, they're the ones we really relate to. A lot of people use the words hip-hop to describe us, but they're funny words. We were influenced by early ray that whole New York, b-boything."

".. . As well as punk and rock'n'roll and reggae and dub," adds Jill. "People always tended to focus on the beat aspect of it, but we never did rap in a strictly traditional way. And, in the same way, Blondie always experimented with all those different kinds of music, too."

"And, what with them having a new record out, the timing was great," adds Kate, who recently had a childhood dream come true when she got to drum for Blondie at a recent US club date. "Hopefully, we can ride their wave! Actually, I ran into them recently and Debbie told me they were playing huge sheds. So I asked: 'Maybe we can open for your And she said:Yeah, well maybe we can open for you!"

IT'S not so far-fetched. Luscious Jackson's new single, the sunburst electro of "Ladyfingers", is so damn radio-friendly it's just set up home with a four-band transistor. From its opening, acoustic harmonised loveliness, via its scratching, pulsing verse to its jump-up-and-down headnod chores, it's a taste of LJ's decidedly more tuneful new direction. And it's about cakes. Obviously.

"Ladyfingers are a very sweet kind of dessert," explains Jill, now safely ensconced back at a snazzi modern record company offices, just off Lexington Avenue. "it's a song about being sweet, about letting down that tough exterior." "We're really nice girls," puns Gabby. "I do so many nice things on an hourly, minutely basis I couldn't even begin to pick one." "We give directions every single day," suggests Kate.

"And we always help blind people across streets, carry strollers up stairs", adds Jill. So, beneath that sassy exterior beats a kind and sensitive heart, right?

"Exactly," pouts Kate. "Beneath the sassy, feminist, Beastie Boy-laden..."

"Assmasters!"

Thanks, Gabby.

Lucious Jackson, ladies and gentlemen. Firm favourites.