Fridae

Some things stay in vogue throughout the decades: blue jeans, fast food cravings, gym memberships, being beautiful, one-night-stands, and of course... Pet Shop Boys.

However, the only thing that's always been pass� about Pet Shop Boys is their name. Who would ever associate themselves with dog barf and cat poop? "We thought it sounded like an English rap group", they once said. Whatever! I always thought they sounded like a run-down gay bathhouse filled with East End boys.

Release is the Boys' eighth studio offering after being in the scene for close to two decades. How did they last this long? I'll just assume it's from good nutrition and great sex. The album runs short with 10 tracks amounting to exactly 45 minutes in length (and not a second spared).

I must say that Release is one of the better PSB albums I've heard in years. Home And Dry (the first single) is a forthright I miss you song, while London (the third single) is an electronic, vocoder-accented "refugee" song that makes Neil Tennant sound like a male version of Cher: "Looking for hard work / Or credit card fraud / What do you expect from us? / We come from abroad".

E-mail (which sounds like it was specifically written for Dido) is a reflection of the times that puts an end to the phrases "send it in a letter" and "call me on the phone". Why do all that when you can just "send me an e-mail / that says "I love you"? In other words, he's saying: "Why won't you e-mail me? Are you fucking someone you met in a chat room behind my back?"

Unquestionably, the most interesting song would be The Night I Fell In Love, which is an imagined one-night-stand with an unnamed Eminem. If it weren't so hilarious and unrealistic, I'd say it would have made a perfect love song. After all, we all want to get into Eminem's pants, no matter how evil he is.

The downside to the album is not worth talking much about. They come in the form of unoriginal tracks like I Get Along (the second single that sounds like an Oasis rip-off) and Birthday Boy, which has an eerie resemblance to something made by the 4 Non Blondes. What were they thinking?

As always, the Boys leave most things unsaid. An example here would be the total lack of personal messages in the liner notes. And I'm not even going to say much about the white-on-white printing of the CD cover. Talk about being boring!

Tennant once explained in an interview, "I always maintain that we're completely misunderstood anyway. People often say 'it's wonderful, it's so camp', and I just smile politely because I'm bit disappointed really because it wasn't meant to be camp."