Queer (1992)

Pop history was supposed to have swallowed up synth-bands like this retrograde duo, but Tom Bailey and Alannah Currie won't go down. As if the mid-'80s — the period of the Twins' chart life — never passed, they greet the hard pulse of today's intense dance-club hits with laid-back defiance. In Queer, their bland ''sonic groove'' could be tagged middle-of-the- rut, while the guitar splashes over the skipping bass in ''Come Inside'' are fit only for easy shuffling. The Twins are too stiff to pull off something called ''My Funky Valentine''; they're still wedding arch-rock to a two-step rhythm. The best cuts are toss-offs, ''Shake It Down'' and ''Wind It Up,'' both bouncy, simple ditties sweetened by Currie's girl-group-style backing vocals; you could dance to this pair — if you really wanted to. But you'd have to disregard lyrics that fail to balance the outré and the naive (''Strange Jane'') and a murkily mixed title track that makes pretentious use of a verse by British poet Edith Sitwell. Morrissey got more points by putting Dame Edith on a T-shirt. C+