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Oh, those pet shop boys - once upon a time, they were the most flip and flamboyant pop spectacle around, prancing across MTV with a little bit of Siegfried and a whole lot of Roy. These days, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have settled into a more leisurely pace as a venerable, long-running cult act - Eurotrash disco's answer to the Grateful Dead, with fans trading rare remixes the way Deadheads trade live tapes. The faithful will find plenty of kicks on Nightlife. The ornate song structures are more Sondheim than Sylvester, but the future-cheese electrobeats hit home, while the witty lament "You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk" reveals where upstart fops like Belle and Sebastian learned their tricks. Budding cultists should start with Actually, Introspective or Very, but Nightlife truly takes off in "Closer to Heaven," an ecstatic disco whirl that steals its guitar hook from U2; it's a brilliantly twisted mind grope in the classic Pet Shop style. Presumably their knighthoods are in the mail. (RS 825)
ROB SHEFFIELD
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