PET SHOP BOYS SINGLES (Part Twenty-seven)

On 20 July 2016, the Pet Shop Boys enjoyed the first of a sold-out four-night residency at London’s Royal Opera House. The event is called Inner Sanctum, after one of the tracks on Super.

Neil Tennant explained the thought process.  “We thought it would be exciting to play at a venue a lot of people won’t have been to, the grandest theatre in London. There is actually a creative tension between an institution like the Royal Opera House and electronic dance music, and I think we’ve hoping that will prove to be a rather fruitful tension, because it’s exciting to take electronic music into a venue that doesn’t normally have it.”

Here’s a review of the opening night, penned by Shaun Curran for The Independent newspaper:-

“Tonight I’m afraid there is no ballet or opera,” says Neil Tennant as he surveys the stately Royal Opera House, “just pop kids”. The statement is knowingly self-effacing: three decades into a career which has perpetually showed that pop music and high art cannot only co-exist but surpass supposedly superior musical forms, Pet Shop Boys are still at it. This year’s “The Pop Kids”, a nostalgic, acid-house reflection of Nineties club land in the vein of their 1990 classic “Being Boring”, glories in “telling everyone we knew that rock was overrated”.

In that context, the ROH is a perfectly subversive location for a four-night residency unveiling their brand new stage show Inner Sanctum. If Pet Shop Boys’ injecting of intelligence and pathos into chart hits (42 and counting) has helped take pop to new heights, their conceptual stage shows have become equally vital. Directed by long-time collaborator ES Devlin, Inner Sanctum is split into four acts – In The Night, Sun, Inside and Euphoric – and is a vivid, laser-laden spectacular taking in everything from rotating, multi-coloured pods (from which Tennant and keyboardist Chris Lowe appear), hip-hop dancing, a swarm of futuristic aliens and a flood of colourful inflatable dancers. Affected, moving, colourful and flat out fun, it is some spectacle.

And with 30 years of copper-bottomed classics to draw on, the music can hardly fail. New album Super is the second of a proposed trilogy with Madonna cohort Stuart Price (who also worked as musical producer for the show). Like its equally strident predecessor Electric, it finds Neil Tennant (62) and Chris Lowe (56) defying pop convention and refusing to bow to age, making some of the most purposefully electronic sounds of their career. It provides some of tonight’s highlights: opener “Inner Sanctum” and “Burn” are unapologetically full-on, hands-in-the-air euphoric.

Long-term PSB fans will be assured the duo’s personalities remain fixed. While at his keyboard Lowe remains Lowe – resolutely motionless – the sparkly-suit clad Tennant is in his element: wearing a permanent expression of “oh, look at this, here’s another pop gem I’ve just found”, he parades the stage with suave certainty, his vocals, particularly on the elegiac “Home and Dry”, still yearning with emotion. As the set reaches its end and the hits pile up with a breathless flurry – the self-questioning disco of “It’s a Sin”, a propulsive “Left to My Own Devices”, the communal rally of “Go West” – Tennant can’t hide his elation.

They end with a reprise of “The Pop Kids”, with its declaration “we loved the pop hits”: and like that, the curtain falls on some of the best you’ll ever hear.

Really makes me wish I’d been there………..or indeed at the reprise of the show in July 2018 which was filmed and released the following year on DVD.  The footage is superb, but there’s nothing quite like being there.

The residency was marked with a limited edition 12″ single containing the album and a couple of demo versions of Inner Sanctum along with this:-

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – Inner Sanctum (Carl Cox C2 Juiced RMX)

JC