PET SHOP BOYS: "Very" (Parlophone).

NAMING YOURSELF after the street slang for a teenage male prostitute and still managing to wangle your way into the heart of Britain's pop establishment has always struck me as a stroke of pure perverse genius.

To borrow a line from Leonard Cohen, the Pet Shop Boys are using their sexual ambiguity to change the system from within and, as such, are infinitely more subversive than The Levellers could ever hope to be.

The reason that Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have been so successful in maintaining the scam is that they've avoided direct confrontation, preferring instead to lace their kitsch disco anthems and gloriously overblown ballads with teasing innuendo that you can either embrace or slap round the head and send packing. Very offers little in the way of surprises, just 13 immaculately conceived tracks which, if someone else's name was on the cover, could easily pass as a 'Greatest Hits' package.

'Can You Forgive Her?' finds Tennant mulling over a dangerous liaison in that thoroughly English, gentlemanly sort of way which has become his stock-in-trade. The production is as bombastic as the message is subtle, syndrums exploding all over the joint in a hi-tech orgy that's coming to a dancefloor near you soon. While the Pet Shop Boys have always been in sync with club culture, they've never hitched a ride on anyone else's bandwagon and the only people they plagiarise here are themselves. 'I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind Of Thing' is a half-speed 'What Have I Done To Deserve This?', 'To Speak Is A Sin' is Dusty's 'Nobody's To Blame' revisited and 'A Different Point Of View' is a none-too-distant relation of 'It's Alright'.

The album's first genuinely inspired moment is supplied by 'Dreaming Of The Queen', a bittersweet orchestral workout which namechecks Lady Di and uses a string of metaphors to highlight the plight of AIDS sufferers.

Elsewhere and 'Yesterday When I Was Mad' pays homage to the acting profession in suitably affected fashion, 'Young Offender' steals its bleepy bits from Sonic The Hedgehog and 'One In A Million' boasts a chorus that's simply irresistible. Stealing the honours, though, is a completely O.T.T. cover of the seventies' gay rallying cry, 'Go West', which is so camp it makes the Village People original sound like it was sung by a gang of 18 stone Irish navvies.

Of special interest to Pet Shop Boy diehards is the 'limited edition collector's wallet' which comes complete with Relentless, a free dance remix album that doesn't cut much ice on the home stereo but is well kicking through a club p.a.

Pop music hasn't tasted this good in years. If you don't believe me, give it a suck.

• Stuart Clark.