And hooray that ace-upon-release single 'I'm With Stupid' is perhaps the most obvious and least rewarding track on here, overly Pet Shop Boys by numbers, and sounding as if it could have emerged at any point in their twenty year career. Yet that – and the fashionista-hooking line about "asymmetric haircut and a painted eye" that pretty much opens the album – are pretty much the only unsurprising moments here. Tennant and Lowe's have come up with an album that's undeniably their own, yet feels fresh and relevant today. Indeed, this is a return to form as effortless and stylishly executed as we've encountered in years.

The sweeping strings and rhythmic simplicity of 'I Made My Excuses And Left' make it one of those sad ballads that Neil Tennant's voice suits so well, and serves to remind how he's been long neglected as a master of the mournful. 'Minimal' makes for an immediate, aptly named, contrast, sprightly zipping synthesisers and a bassline borrowed off straight from New Order. What's more, they've rightly realised that making an album chock-full of screaming camp bangers would merely make them look like a pair of decaying, bleach-blond queens spilling out of their sleeveless vests in some forsaken provincial nightspot. So 'Fundamental' is full of artful and thoughtful mid-tempo pieces more suited to pleasingly crafted furniture and a night in with the dog. See 'Numb', for instance, or the seductive and reflective 'Luna Park', with its gentle (and rightly understated acoustic guitar), piano, and sumptuous string crescendo. Even better is 'Cassanova In Hell', a sweeping historical ballad at contrast to the pleasingly kinky lyrics "his lives and lovers and above all / His erection / will live in history."

But the Pet Shop Boys were never going to neglect the more deviant up-beat moments they do so well. Opener 'Psychological' is all pulsing and dark, a kung fu synth refrain as punctuation to the mystery, while 'The Sodom And Gomorrah Show' is 'Fundamental's visit to Tennant's obsession with themes of transgression, this time made as explicitly biblical as ever over some imperious and magnificent work from Chris Lowe. And of course, they go out with a belter: 'Integral' is bicep bulging banger with a superb chorus hook... "If you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to fear," sings Tennant, aptly. For 'Fundamental' will not only be rated up there among the Pet Shop Boys finest albums – it's also arguably the best electro pop record we've heard in years.

Luke Turner

reviewed on 23 May 2006