Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 10/10/05
Label: Interscope/Polydor

If "200KM/H In The Wrong Lane", the five-million selling debut from teen 'lesbians' Julia Volkova and Lena Katina, was the birth of Russian pop music, follow-up, "Dangerous And Moving", is the death of it. And a slow, tortuous, overly long, cringingly painful death at that. Like the Cheeky Girls singing over-the-top soft rock while serving a life sentence in the gulag, it's the worst of Europop, delivered in one dark, yet hideously twee album.

As with oil, capitalism and McDonalds, t.A.T.u's 2003 debut album demonstrated post-Soviet Russia's deep appreciation and understanding of the best of western culture. Built on sex, controversy and insanely catchy tunes, such as the unshakable "All The Things She Said", it was the archetypal pop album, and t.A.T.u - two teenage girls, who claimed to be lesbians, didn't speak in interviews and danced around in school uniforms in a slightly dodgy video - were a masterfully executed pop phenomenon.

Yet it would be wrong to assume that the t.A.T.u bubble has burst because the controversy is all but spent and they've ditched the outfits. While it's true that second time around the pair and their relationship are nowhere near as newsworthy, the biggest fault with their second album is that it's terminally dull.

A bleak monotonal trudge through industrial-ish synth-rock and the apparent misery of being Russian, the likes of "All About Us", "Cosmos (Outer Space)" and "Perfect Enemy" come with all the excitement and emotion of a goose-stepping May Day parade in Red Square while giving new meaning to the term one-dimensional.

And as if the constant Iron Curtain thud wasn't punishment enough, there's a never ending supply of down-mouthed alienation to contend with. "Loves Me Not" has them confused, torn and toying with the idea of boy love, before deciding that, no, they really do prefer girls. "Craving (I Only Want What I Can't Have)" is at turns floaty and depressed, as they bleat about never being satisfied, while "Sacrifice" has them squealing like tortured choirboys about giving everything up for their forbidden love.

Add a relentless stream of thin and scratchy euro-trash melodies, which wouldn't make it to Eurovision, with keyboards to match, and "Dangerous And Moving" is an album that's desperately hard to listen to, let alone care about. First time round they made music which, while dark and isolated, tantalised and intrigued. This time it's hard to tell tracks are apart they're so uniformly soulless. It would appear that the Russian Pop Revolution is over.

    by Dan Gennoe