During the '80s, the Pet Shop Boys maintained a high productivity rate, releasingan album every 15 months or so. But after 1990's Behaviour, the duo'srecorded output dipped, with a new album appearing every three years on the nose.Although their newfound love of touring doubtless had something to do with it,it's easier to understand this shift when you take note of the way the onceemotionally reserved vocalist/lyricist Neil Tennant opened up on 1993's Very.That album, one of the decade's best, was the Boys' apex, and it setthe tone for everything that followed: even when they were being arch (the badassGay Pride uber-anthem "New York City Boy"), it was mitigated by nakedemotionality ("Footsteps," a heart-stopping devotional pledge)-andthe juxtaposition suggested more commonality than opposition.

The new Release-three years after 1999's Nightlife, right on schedule-isless dynamic than any of the Boys' previous work; it's more of a singer-songwriteralbum with electronic inflections than the Europoppy Very or the trance-infusedNightlife. Indeed, Release seems like the group's cabaret album, centeredaround slow, dramatic, rockish songs like "Love is a Catastrophe" and"Birthday Boy," but the best material is the poppiest. Lead single "Homeand Dry" is fully the equal of anything they've done, a neater versionof "Footsteps" with an irresistible chorus. "Email" is a,well, cute variation on waiting-for-a-phone-call with Tennant at his breathiest.And the subject of "The Night I Fell in Love" is none other than Eminem,who invites the schoolboy narrator back to the hotel for, um, a "privateperformance."