40 years on and the Boys have still got that sparkle
Arecord called Nonetheless! It could only be the Pet Shop Boys. Their 15th studio album is also the 15th to have a one-word title. This week it will surely become the 15th to reach the top ten.
It’s 40 years since Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe released their first single, the flop version of West End Girls (which stalled at No133, before they rejigged it and landed their first No1).
They have given us 40 years of sparkling consistency, making electro-pop that is always the same, yet always different.
Their stock is rising now. Old hits have acquired new lustre in two talked-about films, Saltburn and All Of Us Strangers. The Dreamworld tour is still filling arenas, on and off, after two years. Their career has just been encapsulated in a BBC1 documentary. The NME calls them ‘synthpop deities’, while Mojo, much to Lowe’s distaste, opts for ‘the archbishops of arch’.
On Monday, Pet Shop Boys were interviewed on stage at Kings Place in London, where a packed house gave them a standing ovation before they had even uttered a word.
Lowe was typically taciturn, Tennant typically lucid. ‘There’s no ideology any more in music,’ said Tennant, who is nearly 70. ‘People listen with an open mind and they’re not ageist about it. That is very refreshing.’
Lowe needs only three words to sum up the Pet Shop Boys’ sound: ‘electronics with strings’. This is truer than ever on Nonetheless, produced by
James Ford. Tennant and Lowe admired him not just for his well-known work with Arctic Monkeys and Depeche Mode, but for his use of strings with The Last Shadow Puppets.
The upshot is that most of these ten tracks have three things going on at once. There’s a pop hook, a dance beat and a luxurious air, with the orchestra smuggling in extra melodies.
It often feels as if this duo from the 1980s are introducing the 2020s to the 1960s.
And that’s before you take in Tennant’s lyrics, which mix crisp detachment with intense feeling. The ex-journalist in him tells stories about Rudolf Nureyev’s heyday, Oscar
Wilde’s imprisonment, cheesy Europop (‘sexy, sexy, sexy!’) and what life must be like for Donald Trump’s bodyguard. These are not things you can get from Ed Sheeran.
When he swaps journalism for poetry, Tennant is even better. He devotes two sunny tunes to loneliness, two bittersweet ones to being in love, and two sombre ones to piercing reminiscence.
On A New Bohemia, a gravely beautiful ballad, he finds a killer line at just the right moment: ‘Your only friend is the memory of a dream.’
The other album of the week comes from Annie Clark, aka
St Vincent, now 41 and in her prime. With All Born Screaming she has a title to die for, and she lives up to it with some searing choruses. She can stage a rocking psychodrama like Prince, then find the spot where funk meets satire, like Peter Gabriel.
Her show at the Albert Hall on June 1 should be a blast.
Pet Shop Boys
Nonetheless
Out now
★★★★★
St Vincent
All Born Screaming
Out now
★★★★★