We’ve now reached 2013. The Pet Shop Boys announced that, after 28 years, they were leaving Parlophone Records and that their next album will be released globally on their own label x2 (pronounced “times two”) through Kobalt Label Services.
As it turned out, the next release was a digital single:-
mp3 : Pet Shop Boys – Axis
Here’s the thing. I’m coming to this and subsequent eras of PSB completely fresh and hearing these songs for the first time. I’ll admit it was with a bit of trepidation as I wasn’t wholly enamoured by the music from 2012, much of which felt as if the duo were in the studios simply for the sake of it.
But I’ll hold my hand up and say that Axis is a real return to form. The sort of sound, beat and energy that first got me listening to PSB. It’s really interesting that this was issued in such a low-key way on 30 April 2013, with the digital-only release along with a promo video on their YouTube channel. In due course, (July 2013) there would be a physical release on 12″ vinyl, which came with a remix, so no bonus b-sides this time.
There was an equally low-key follow-up single on 3 June, again in digital format only.
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Vocal
One thing to note is that the digital download is more than six-and-a-half minutes long. The video version on YouTube is three-and-a-half minutes in length, which makes me think an edited version was provided to radio stations in case they wanted to air it.
Vocal is another great and joyous return to form that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in giant tents across various summer festivals in that or any subsequent years.
As with Axis, it didn’t chart. It also was given a later digital release, on CD and 12″ vinyl, being packaged with eight different remixes.
14 July 2013 saw the release of the new album, Electric, on x2 Records.
As mentioned, I wasn’t paying any attention. But in pulling this piece together, and having listened to the two download singles as I typed away, I looked over the reviews from 2013, and paid particularly close attention to what the great Alexis Petridis had penned for The Guardian. Here’s some snippets:-
Last September, Pet Shop Boys released their 11th studio album, Elysium. It was rather coolly received, perhaps as a result of its tone. It took its title from the afterlife to which the ancient Greeks thought the heroic and righteous were transported after death. Mostly written while touring Europe’s sports stadiums in support of Take That, its tracks chugged along at a genteel mid-tempo, its lyrics were sombre and sour.
The song, Your Early Stuff, bemoaned the downside of Pet Shop Boys’ longevity and ongoing national treasure status: even if everyone’s delighted to see you enlivening the Olympic closing ceremony by singing West End Girls while being pedalled around the stadium on an orange rickshaw, you might nevertheless feel a sense of diminishing returns setting in. In fact, Elysium could have been taken as the sound of Pet Shop Boys bidding their audience farewell. You were sighingly forced to conclude, perhaps it was inevitable: Chris Lowe is 53, Neil Tennant nearly 59; their work in recent years has increasingly looked beyond pop music, stretching into film soundtracks, ballet scores and orchestral works.
And so it comes as something of a relief to find Pet Shop Boys not merely releasing a 12th studio album, but promoting it with a photograph featuring Lowe with his head entirely encased in a disco mirrorball. As statements of intent go, it’s matched only by Electric’s opening track, Axis, five-and-a-half minutes of writhing Italo disco-influenced synth chatter and vocodered vocals issuing a series of dancefloor commands: “Feel the power … plug it in … turn it on.”
It’s not the last time Electric sounds like Elysium’s negative image. The album relocates a duo last seen sniping from the sidelines – albeit very wittily – at a world that seemed to be moving on without them to the centre of the action.
Quite what provoked all this is a matter for debate. Tennant has talked about being struck by a negative iTunes review of Elysium that demanded “more banging and lasers”, but it’s also worth taking into account the presence of producer Stuart Price, who helmed Madonna’s Confessions on a Dancefloor and is thus something of a past master at returning pop stars of a certain vintage to clubland. Whatever the reason, a band that sounded pretty weary eight months ago sound recharged and inspired.
At this point in time, I have no option other than to procure myself a copy of Electric. I’ll return next week with some thoughts on the later singles that were taken from it.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
First listen to both of these for me too and I like them. Funnily enough, I was perusing the track listing for the latest PSB compilation, Smash, which purports to be all of the singles but isn’t quite. The radio edit of Vocal appears there but Axis (which also had a promo radio edit) is missed off altogether.
Again, massive thanks for this series, JC.
I actually did listen to Electric upon its release and liked the return to form (except the annoying Bolshy). In 2015 I saw them play the Way Out West festival, and the audience rather ecstatic over all the old hits were, except myself almost on my own, rather indifferent to the songs from Electric they played – I think very few had heard them.
Chris even played in his disco mirrorball, and Neil wore the “suit” from the Vocal cover.
I last saw PSB when they headlined at Moogfest 2014 and I really wanted to buy “Electric” to hear it v in advance as I had not heard a note since 1994 but it was simply not possible to buy the latest PSB CD in my city. To my chagrin. The show was “stripped back” from the Broadway excesses of “Performance;” the first time I had seen them in 1990, yet still packed with inventive staging far beyond all of the other acts at the festival.
All new to me. Thanks JC