*1/2 LaBouche

S.O.S.

(BMG)

"Sure to escalate their posture from a dominant dance force into a mainstream pop mainstay," says the PR release accompanying this German duo's long-overdue second US CD. Dance-music fans know this scam all too well: the first CD has fiery, lurid, over-the-top music so fast and metallic it scares your ears off and arouses lots of controversy. Then comes the second CD: tempos slow down, melodies get polish, the group quote hooks from previous pop songs.

As always with LaBouche, the ballads lack drama. As for the covers: do we really need to hear LaBouche render Lime's 1984 tender-voiced cult classic "Unexpected Lovers" in their own inappropriately screaming style? Or listen in "S.O.S." to a false replay of Rhetta Hughes's "Sending Out an S.O.S.," a 1975 disco secret? Only in the lushly dreamy "Whenever You Want" and "Sweet Little Persuader" and in the gothically Latinized "Bolingo" do Lane McCray, Melanie Thornton, and their German studio cohort offer the dangerous lusts and spacy idealism that made LaBouche's first CD Eurodisco's best ever.

-- Michael Freedberg