Nostalgic pop from Pet Shop pensioners
PET SHOP BOYS: Nonetheless (Parlophone)
Verdict: Wry and wonderful. ★★★★☆
ST. VINCENT: All Born Screaming (Virgin)
Verdict: Annie toughens up her act. ★★★★☆
FOUR decades into a career that has seen them become Britain’s most successful pop duo ever, the Pet Shop Boys are showing little sign of slowing down. Singer Neil Tennant and musician Chris Lowe could have settled for living solely on past glories — their ongoing Dreamworld: The Greatest Hits Live tour does just that — but they are also moving on, archly-raised eyebrows very much intact.
The duo, who met in an electronics shop in Chelsea in 1981, are an institution, and their latest release continues a mid-life renaissance that dates back to 2013’s Electric, the first in a trilogy of dance records made with Madonna’s producer, Stuart Price. Now, working with a new collaborator in James Ford, they are shifting the dial.
One thing that remains is their fondness for snappy, single-word album titles. Taylor Swift maintained a similar policy for ten years until breaking it with The Tortured Poets Department. But Tennant, 69, and Lowe, a mere 64, keep the one-word faith on Nonetheless. They once nearly called an album Jollysight (because it was ‘a jolly sight’ better than their previous one), so there’s no reason for them to change now.
It’s a record that combines old and new. There are melodic hooks, electronic grooves and wry lyrics that hark back to 1980s hits such as West End Girls – but also a move to live instrumentation, especially on a string of poignant character sketches adorned with producer Ford’s sweeping string arrangements.
LYRICIST Tennant sets his songs in surprising places and different eras. The Pet Shop Boys are avid popculture vultures, and opening track Loneliness harks back to a scene in The Beatles’ 1964 comedy A Hard Day’s Night. ‘Like Ringo walking by the canal, downcast and alone, you’re taking time to play that part, a man who skims a stone,’ he sings.
Ringo isn’t the only famous face — or place — referenced. Dancing Star is a celebration of Soviet ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, ‘a trouble-maker among sombre men’, who defected to the West in 1961. A New Bohemia recalls Britpop London. The Schlager Hit Parade, its twangy guitars lending a country-ish feel, pays homage to the happy-go-lucky German pop music that flourished after the Second World War.
It’s all very droll, very Pet Shop Boys. But an entire LP in the same vein would be tiring, and Tennant wisely lowers his guard. Why Am I Dancing, its downbeat lyrics mixed with an upbeat tune, is about wanderlust. New London Boy, illuminated by a West End Girls-style rap, tells of how he left the fishing port of North Shields to seek a new life down south in 1973. According to The Killers’ Brandon Flowers — who was offered one of the tracks here, Feel, but has yet to record it — the Pet Shop Boys deserve credit for remaining relevant while becoming a hit on the nostalgia circuit. ‘They can write one hell of a pop song,’ he adds. There’s a few more of them here.
SINGER-SONGWRITER Annie Clark, the Dallas musician better known as St. Vincent, paid a brilliant homage to 1970s New York on her last album, Daddy’s Home, in 2021.
It was a record of soft vocal harmonies, nods to Steely Dan, and even (although this stretched the point) a re-working of Sheena Easton’s 1981 singalong 9 To 5.
She’s toughened up her act on All Born Screaming. It’s a record of two halves – the first dark and aggressive, the second seeking calm – and it’s often scattergun. It also wears its influences, particularly David Bowie and Prince, too obviously on its sleeve. The highlights, though, are spellbinding.
The first LP on which the triple Grammy winner, 41, acts as sole producer, it opens with the ominous Hell Is Near, Annie singing of empty cups and halfburned candles as her 12-string guitar adds a folky feel.
The riffs are heavier on Reckless, and Foo Fighters drummer Dave Grohl crops up on Flea, on which Clark plays a small, flight-less insect. ‘l look at you, and all I see is meat,’ she warns.
Part two steps back from the guitar barrage, even if the lyrics are no less gloomy at first. The Power’s Out is a sister piece to Bowie’s Five Years – from 1972’s Ziggy Stardust – right down to Clark’s stuttering drum pattern. Echoing Bowie’s prophecy of doom, she witnesses shootings and a suicide: ‘The power’s out, and no one can save us.’
The mood eventually lifts. There’s wonky reggae on So Many Planets, and she adds superlative guitar on Sweetest Fruit.
On the epic title track, there’s also a self-effacing admission that she’s both ‘a pantomime of a modern girl’ and ‘a karaoke version’ of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. Darker than Daddy’s Home, it still reiterates her skill as a mistress of reinvention.
▪ Pet Shop Boys Play Belfast’s SSE Arena on June 11 (ticketmaster.ie).