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*~*~Black & Blue Album Review~*~*

*~With their monster 1999 hit ""I Want It That Way,"" the Backstreet Boys proved there was enough room in boy-pop to accommodate a stream-of-consciousness burst of longing worthy of funkin' Ulysses. Despite what snotty bands like Girls Against Boys may believe, that qualifies Backstreet as artists in my book. Since they function similarly to the unicorn in popular culture, however, they're in no position to vent an artistic temperament full-force. Having to constantly offer up a non-threatening image of masculinity necessarily dampens their ability to express anger, horniness i.e., all the dark stuff that everyone, including Florida's best, surely feel from time to time.

*~The very cover of Black & Blue suggests that Nick, Kevin, Howie, Brian and A.J. have made at least some allowances for themselves this time around. What other teen idols could get away with eschewing a glamour shot of the beaus in the band, in favor of an austere half-and-half color scheme? And is anyone beside me ooked out by the title itself, which seems to promise the hit song Britney Spears failed so guilelessly to anticipate?

*~Fortunately, there is no such title track. For the first single, ""Shape of My Heart,"" the Boys admit they've been emotionally blocked screw-ups in the past who are willing now to open up and show you the shape of their heart. But there's an eerie ambiguity here, in that the song especially the ominous oil-drumming rhythm in the beginning never discourages the suspicion that it may be an unpleasant sight.

*~"The Call" is even more straightforward. Over a beat that slams like a slowed-down ""Can You Feel It,"" a jerk cheats on his girl and it gets back to her. The theme of the song is him telling her he's sorry, albeit while singing the cell phone lie which provides the chorus: ""Say again/ You're dropping out/ My battery is low.""

*~Apart from those two expressive kick-offs, though, the rest of the album is back-to-church-basement harmonies and familiar pledges of eternal devotion. While they're actually men at this point, they're still boys in the eyes of their fans, and the tension inherent in that fact never gets played out. Witness a song like "Time," which looks both ways and can only come up with the lame platitude, "Time is what it is, come what may."

*~Maybe The Backstreet Boys took boy-pop as far as it could go with ""I Want It That Way."" This would seem to be the case, given the few suffocated attempts here to push the music to the limit, aesthetically and commercially. (After all, gotta beat those first-week *NSync figures). Where All-4-One could love you like that, the Boys will love you "More Than That." And from "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)," back when they hadn't even gone away, to this album's "Everyone," precious little distance has been traveled. What's next "Every Person"? Now there's a demographic for you.