Strive as they may toward kinkiness, Animotion's second LP couldn't be more normal. They may revel in feeling "Out of Control" and brag about "Staring Down the Demons," but the incessantly peppy synth pop on Strange Behavior is more likely to get Animotion cast in a Bloomingdale's commercial than committed to Bellevue. When singer Astrid Plane starts chanting "anxiety attack" over an assembly-line-stamped hook on "Anxiety," it's like she's introducing a new dance craze. You keep waiting for her to say, "And it goes like this."

Anybody waiting for Animotion to break out of the box with another single like "Obsession" best not hold his breath. Also co-penned by Holly Knight, the follow-up "I Engineer" may be virtually identical musically, but it still falls way short, perhaps because the lyrics replace blunt seduction with cold-blooded manipulation. As Astrid and Bill Wadhams intone, "I engineeeeeeer this game," over a mechanized march beat, it's hard not to feel a bit used yourself. Elsewhere their duets fail to create an air of tension – their voices are homogenized beyond identity, and the banal "craziness" of the lyrics doesn't offer much help. Astrid and Bill could switch places on the bouncy "Out of Control," and it wouldn't matter.

It's a different story, however, when Wadhams is left on his own on "The Essence." Like a Gary Puckett for the Eighties, wise old Bill celebrates May-December romance, accompanied by appropriately smarmy synthesized strings: "Reaching for the essence in a younger woman's heart/Knowing adolescence is the highest form of art." That's the only spark of pathology on this wretchedly overwrought piece of product. You needn't be an expert to diagnose the origin of this Strange Behavior: an uncertain band on deadline goes through the motions. Unfortunately, there's nothing strange about that. (RS 473)

MARK COLEMAN