Pet Shop Boys: Neil Tennant (vocals, guitar, keyboards); Chris Lowe (keyboards, programming).

Additional personnel includes: Johnny Marr (guitar); Chris Zippel (keyboards); Steve Walters (bass); Jodie Linscott (percussion).

Recorded at Studio PSB and Sony Music Studios, London, England.

RELEASE was nominated for the 2003 Grammy Awards For Best Recording Package.

This is an Enhanced CD, which contains regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files. This Limited version also includes a bonus disc and features four different versions of cover art.

Pet Shop Boys: Neil Tennant (vocals, guitar, keyboards); Chris Lowe (keyboards, programming).

Additional personnel includes: Little Mike (guitar, bass); Johnny Marr (guitar); Chris Zippel (keyboards); Steve Walters (bass); Jodie Linscott (percussion).

RELEASE was nominated for the 2003 Grammy Awards For Best Recording Package.

The Pet Shop Boys have never made a bad album, but with Nightlife, they started to seem a little worn out, as if they had explored their sound as far as it would go. But Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe are among the smartest, pop-savvy groups to ever record, so they not only realized they were stagnating, they knew what to do about it, bringing Tennant's Electronic partner and former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr for several songs, and moving the group toward careful, considered, mature pop for their eighth album, Release (another pun-worth title, worthy of Please). For most artists, the adjective "mature" would seem an epithet, but here it's an accurate description for this elegant, eloquent, knowing music -- it's maturation achieved through experience and worldliness, not an exorbitant bank account. On that level, this is about the most mature pop album released this decade, exhibiting a refined sense of craft and a keen sense of purpose, marrying the particular sentiment of a song with the right production. It's hard to call Release an album of its time, since it hardly falls prey to trends, but it's aware of its time -- an album that's proudly out of step with the particulars of hipness, but knows what they constitute, knows what they feel like, knows what modernism means for somebody who's lived their life with the burden of being hip, whose always felt a compulsion to stay on top of things -- and feeling that desire fade as you get older. So, that means that while Release occasionally sings of the new -- synth lines, vocoders, beats, a song designed to respond to Eminem's homophobia (the exquisite "The Night I Fell in Love") -- it's from the vantage of people who have lived through all of this before, and know particulars will pass while the song remains the same. The great thing is, even if this sentiment has been present in previous Pet Shop Boys albums, they have brought the dance-club to the background (partially due to Marr's presence) and have brought the songs to the forefront, resulting in a record that feels like the Pet Shop Boys, even when it doesn't sound like them. And that's a good thing, since it retains their greatest attributes while giving them a new spin, and it makes for the best Pet Shop Boys album in nearly ten years. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Those whose minds are fixed on yesterday (read: the '80s) may forever associate the slyly intellectual pop duo Pet Shop Boys with now-cliche electronic dance flavors. Any expectation of nostalgia for such an approach on RELEASE is bound to be met with more than a little surprise. While there are sophisticated, percolating dance beats to be found in "The Samurai in Autumn" and some mildly danceable rhythm loops are heard elsewhere, this is an extremely organic album that occasionally verges on (dare it be said?) rock, or at least pop-rock. The cinematic, piano-driven torch song-in-denial "I Get Along" could have been penned by a more enlightened Elton John. The throaty vocals and lush, orchestral pop accompaniment of "Birthday Boy" bear echoes of Spiritualized's "pop" opus LET IT COME DOWN. Thus, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe manage to retain the tone of their initial vision without falling prey to the creeping morass of '80s retro fever, and good for them.

Rolling Stone (5/23/02, p.82) - 3.5 out of 5 stars - "...[For] admirers of melodic craft and pointed poetry--even those stricken with synth-pop allergies..."

Q (4/02, p.119) - 4 out of 5 stars - "...The mood is reflective, the touchstones teary Oasis ballads, and the new 'proper band' architecture well-suits these touching, often funny songs..."

Mojo (Publisher) (April 2002, p.108) - "...A masterclass in delicately infected irony to the accompaniment of mild guitars....looming melancholy and not-quite-cheery disco by the pound..."