Out of Control

Despite their nakedly commercial inception on the British reality TV talent competition POPSTARS, U.K. tabloid mainstay Girls Aloud have consistently defied expectations, offering slyly referential, smart, and sassy dance-pop alternatives to the anodyne and carefully scrubbed polish of their POP IDOL peers. OUT OF CONTROL, the leggy quintet's fifth album, continues to push the boundaries of pop music, drawing on an eclectic array of inspirations from retro-soul and surf rock, to hi-NRG house and synth pop. Masterminded by leading U.K. songwriting and production house Xenomania, the bulk of the material covers familiar ground, from post-Ibiza club-balladry and ABBA-esque Europop, to throbbing rave techno vamps. But for every pulsating club anthem there contains a reverential nod to the pop classics of old, including "The Promise," the girls' swinging, stomping update of classic Motown girl-groups, and "You're Not the Loving Kind," a sweeping seven-minute epic of Balearic synth-melancholia (co-written by Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys).