Used to be the most risqué thing about Debbie Gibson was how in "Lost in Your Eyes" you could hear her sing "I get weak in the glands/Isn't this what's called romance?" when really she meant "glance." But "Losin' Myself," on her surprising new Body Mind Soul, is another story – what Deb does here, Madonna only talks about on Erotica in a voice too frozen to perk up a lonely sailor. Gibson's breathy notes climb mall waterfalls and extend toward heaven as the music flows into cascades of incrementally harder rhythms; she loses her inhibitions as something that "hurts me so right" sends "the ocean ... rushin' over me."

That ocean feeling is in the sound, and it's interesting that joyless guitar droners of the My Bloody Valentine ilk are hyped as "oceanic" or "dream pop," because Debbie beats them on both counts. Bashful Eurodisco girls had been whispering about fleeing to dreams for years, but Debbie's 1987 debut, Out of the Blue, was dream disco's commercial coming out. "Only in My Dreams" was her greatest moment, and "Foolish Beat" was a torch nightmare about abandoning a place where you could wish on four-leaf clovers for a crumbled city of "broken hearts and broken dreams."

Three albums later, Debbie is twenty-two instead of seventeen, yet she still chirps spring-fever tear-jerkers in a fluttery voice as if she's daydreaming during her piano lesson. She also reveals the body and mind we've never seen: "Do You Have It in Your Heart?" and "Free Me" have her escaping the chains of an empty life, then "Shock Your Mama" samples Mitch Ryder, "Losin' Myself" makes its waves, and "How Can This Be?" builds from carbonated gurgles into gospel screeches. Producer Phil Ramone disrupts the bubble-skank of "Tear Down These Walls" with a clanking groove made from industrial power tools. If Debbie is the chaste damsel that Ministry fans heckle, Body Mind Soul is her revenge. (RS 651)

CHUCK EDDY