Yes - Pet Shop Boys

To say ‘they’re back’ would be to suggest that they were ever anywhere else. Never lacking in originality, never lacking a new song or a slightly twisted and tortured lyric, I don’t think the boys ever went away (or at least not far). Their 10th studio album, ‘Yes’, is another on-target release.

Duo Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe won an award for their ‘Outstanding Contribution to Music’ at the 2009 Brit Awards – so is this new album ...
...new to say? They’ve aged quite well, Tennant still has the slightly amused, knowing expression and Lowe seems to be desiccating rather than actually aging, but what of the music?

Co-produced by the Boys and Xenomania (of Girl’s Aloud fame) this album kicks off with the first singe release from it (and I think one of the strongest songs on it), Love etc. A great dance tune with overtones of their massive hit ‘Go West’, I predict you ... more

To say ‘they’re back’ would be to suggest that they were ever anywhere else. Never lacking in originality, never lacking a new song or a slightly twisted and tortured lyric, I don’t think the boys ever went away (or at least not far). Their 10th studio album, ‘Yes’, is another on-target release.

Duo Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe won an award for their ‘Outstanding Contribution to Music’ at the 2009 Brit Awards – so is this new album them resting on their laurels or does it have anything new to say? They’ve aged quite well, Tennant still has the slightly amused, knowing expression and Lowe seems to be desiccating rather than actually aging, but what of the music?

Co-produced by the Boys and Xenomania (of Girl’s Aloud fame) this album kicks off with the first singe release from it (and I think one of the strongest songs on it), Love etc. A great dance tune with overtones of their massive hit ‘Go West’, I predict you will see – or rather hear – this song on a sequence about the 50210-types within 12 months – come back and tell me if I’m wrong

“(Don't have to be)/A big bucks Hollywood star/(Don't have to drive)/A super car to go far/(Don't have to live)/A life of power and wealth/(Don't have to be)/Beautiful but it helps"

Great opening number and ‘anthemic’.

It’s been reported that Chris Tennant said he left his ‘ego at the door’ to work with Xenomania, but in acknowledging that they had helped Girl’s Aloud to more than a dozen big hits in recent years, maybe this was the Boys way or saying they are still hungry for chart success and not just artistic recognition from a dwindling (and aging) fan base. If that is the case, I think it worked – this album is fresh and original, if not of always excellent quality throughout, and I think is actually better than their more recent efforts.

All Over The World follows. Look, if I said to you ‘imagine a French-African vocal chorus over a main theme by Tchaikovsky followed by a mid-Asian disco beat, you’d think I’d lost the plot. Maybe that’s why it called ‘All Over The World’ – and then it’s the Boys and it all makes a lot more, lavish, sense. The lushness of the instrumental elements and its multi-tracked depth contrasts sharply with the thin, almost reedy vocal line from Tennant, but it works somehow. In the middle of the song, the lyric is suddenly thrust forward into prominence and you realise that it’s ‘all about lurve’ – of course.

“It's sincere and its objective/Superficial and true.../Easy and predictable/Exciting and new,/To say I want you/This is a song,/About boys and girls,/You hear it/Playing all over the world...”

I mean, come on: We’ve had ‘Roll Over, Beethoven’ – we’ve had ‘Rock Me, Amadeus’ – who says we are not now due for some sweet Nutcracker with the disco pips?

Track three is Beautiful People, something of an obsession I think for this pop duo.

“Now I can see myself/Without a care in the world/
It's a sun shining, money-spending/Green and healthy new world
Is it only a fantasy/Or could it be reality?

I wanna/Live like beautiful people/
Give like beautiful people/with like beautiful people around”

This wistful, orchestrated song sounds as though it could be an album track from a Dusty Springfield album of the mid-60s – not that it’s old fashioned, but it is period.

A nice track, that slightly haunting and yearning feel that a lot of the Pet Shop Boys signature material has.

After the elegant violin ending to Beautiful People, Did You See Me Coming? bounces in and it could be Kylie – heck, it could be any Stock Aitkin Waterman stable mate from the 80’s. It pure pop – in fact, it’s almost perfect pop. At 3 minutes and 41 seconds long, it is actually 20 seconds or so over the perfect vinyl 7” length (as if anyone still cared) but it has all the other component parts: An intro section, short verses with easy-to-remember lyrics, a bouncy track with a simple verse/chorus structure, a little key change loop about 2 minutes in, a short instrumental section (the dance sequence) and a fade out. And do you know what? It’s not bad and it’s got a killer hook. I am slightly sorry to say I will be humming it all day.

“You don't have to be in Who's Who/To know what's what
You don't have to be a high flier/To catch your flight

The night we met/Was cold and wet/I needed a drink or two
I saw you standing there/And I knew/I'd love to be loved by you”

‘Hmm hmm hmm did you see me comin’ oooh-oooh...(damn I’ve got to stop that looping in my head...)’

Vulnerable, track 5 is still pop but for me this is more Pet Shop Boys. Danceable, but the minor keys and the slightly wistful, yearning, maybe even defensive feel is carried though with the title and the lyric:

“At night/I am lying awake/Through the hours trying/To calculate
Am I good enough?/Could I contrive?/To keep this sham around
Will I survive?

I know you must sometimes/Think I don't care
Or even appreciate/What we share

Though I'm no one's/Stepping stone/The truth is I love you
And I'd go crazy/Alone”

It’s sweet and sad and a little scared. It’s very PSB and I think it’s rather good. This could play out as weak or even a little pathetic, but I don’t think it does and for me it does capture the title/subject ‘Vulnerable’ spot on.

Another pop standard in More Than A Dream but no longer Kylie – this was surely penned for a Girl Band, maybe even aimed at Girls Aloud themselves (the Xenomania tie-up again). Tennant’s slightly thin voice is multi-tracked to give it the ensemble effect, but this is not Boyzone or That That territory – not even nearly.

For me at 4 seconds short of 5 minutes this is slightly too long, too, but it is a good song: It just ends up sounding like a slightly odd-choice cover version here.

Tongue very firmly in cheek, maybe David Cameron will adopt this as his theme tune in reply to the New Labour use of D:Ream ‘Thing’s (Can Only Get Better)’? Cameron could show he was open to both his feminine side and also nod to the LBG community? The lyric is candyfloss:

“I believe we can change/We can make it more than a dream
And I believe we can change/It's not as strange as it might seem

In the air I can feel/Something magical becoming real
From the other side looking in/Come on, throw the dice
And tonight we'll win”

I’m puzzled by Building A Wall, the seventh track on this 11 track album. I wondered at first if it was some reference to the obvious walls (Berlin? Israel/Palestinian Territory? Great (w) of China? Pink Floyd?) but actually the reference seems closer to that from the film ‘Pricilla, Queen of the Desert’ where one of the drag-queen characters refer to the wall of Sydney suburbia with the observation “I’m never sure if it’s there to keep to keep them out or us in”.

This is, I conclude, one of those walls, but it’s a strange track. I guess it will play well on stage and with the usual PSB dramatic staging it will come over well, but it seems a little like it’s lost its way here. There are authoritarian overtones and ‘Big Brother’ type sentiments here, like it’s a latter day attempt by the PSB’s to usurp the Eurhythmics and make a late play to the title track for the film version of 1984.

I'm building a wall/A fine wall/Not so much to keep you out
More to keep me in

I'm losing my head/Well, why not?/More work for the undertaker
Means there's less for me

For me, this is a bit flabby.

Another wistful minor-key track but King of Rome is more trance/chill-out, slower but not melancholy – a Sunday-morning-ish cut. It’s quite lush and musically deep-dish with spun-sugar sweet synthesisers. It’s very PSB and could be taken straight from ‘Being Boring’ or ‘Behaviour’.

It would be wrong to take this all too seriously; this is after all a pop album. This track is, in its own way, both poetic and a little lyrical and it’s not bad, but I don’t think Gershwin has a lot to fear.

“The desert moon, a new lagoon/We glide upon the surface
Night falls fast, no shadows cast/Arriving without purpose

Oh, baby call me/Oh, baby call me today

And if I were the King of Rome/I couldn't be more lonely
With so much scope to dream and hope/Someday you'll deign to phone me”

Having said that, Tennant is one of only a handful of lyricists writing today who would even try to use ‘deign’ in a lyric, so hat’s off for treating us like grown-ups with a vocabulary greater than Oasis.

Its pure Stock Aitkin and Waterman territory again when you get to track nine Pandemonium. This skippy little track seems likely to be an instant favourite with 8 year old girls and drunken uncles at weddings the nation over. No, you’re right – I didn’t like it. Actually, I couldn’t get the lyric either and have had to look it up (I used www.sing365.com/music/lyric).

If I had been able to understand it I would have got:
“To tell you the truth, I thought I was shockproof/
Until I saw what you get up to/
When you think about it, it's quite an achievement/
That after all I still love you/

Oh no, look what you've gone and done/You're creating pandemonium
That song you sing means everything/To me, I'm living in ecstasy
My world's gone mad, what did you do?/Telling perfect strangers that I love you/The stars and the sun dance to your drum
And now it's pandemonium!”

And this all to a bouncy, rounded little tune. It’s odd, I think and to make it stranger I have read one report on the web which says that this is the story of Pete Docherty and Kate Moss as told from her side: Is that true? Well, it sort of fits the lyric so it might be. I think Xenomainia’s fingerprints are all over this one. For me, this is probably the weakest cut on the album, but I do realise that that is very subjective.

Pure dance track and very much the electronic signature of their earlier work The Way It Used To Be could really be no-one but the Pet Shop Boys. This is a line straight back to 1993 and the album ‘Very’ and it is of a consistent quality.

This has got the same sumptuous gateau-layered richness as King of Rome and it’s this quality of music in depth that makes it stand out.

“I can remember days of sun/We knew our lives had just begun
We could do anything, we're fearless when we're young/
Under the moon, address unknown/I can remember nights in Rome/
I thought that love would last, a promise set in stone/

I'd survive with only memories/If I could change the way I feel
But I want more than only memories/A human touch to make them real”

Maybe this is the older person looking back at their younger self, but it’s vibrant and longing and heartfelt.

Which leaves track 11 Legacy (how apt).

There is a funny sequence (depending on your sense of humour) in an old film called ‘Top Secret’ where they are discussing passing time. “Things change” says one “People change. Hairstyles change...bank rates fluctuate”. Cheesy dialogue neatly speared.

So why on earth did masters of the well-turned lyric come up with this as an opening couplet?

“Time will pass, governments fall/Glaciers melt, hurricanes bawl
High-speed trains take us away/North or south and back the same day”

It’s tosh. It’s about as lyrical as a high speed train advert. The tune is not bad and the orchestration is quite interesting (the tympani drum opening is more Lloyd Webber than synth dance pop), it is too long at 6 minutes odd but it is the crass, not to say clumsy lyric that lets this song down.
“It's dark, but you'll get over it/On your mark, you'll get over it/

That Carphone Warehouse boy has been on the phone/
He wants to upgrade the mobile you own/Have you realised your computer's a spy?/Give him a ring, he'll explain why

The bourgeoisie will get over it/Look at me, I'm so over it/
And you, you'll get over it!/You do, you get over it in time”
I am sure you can see what I am getting at.

Again, all of that being said, I do not think that a couple of duds should detract from what I think is overall a highly credible and enjoyable album full of new music and invention. Some artists, after getting the ‘lifetime award’ type accolade, limit themselves to a greatest hits album but the PSB’s have actually come out with probably their best release for 10 years.
Legacy notwithstanding, the lyrics are clever and honest and intelligent and yet still linked to these sparkling pop tunes. It’s a great combination.

Try it, you might like it.
 

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