Category: Pet Shop Boys

It was while I was rebuilding the list of Imaginary Compilation Album that it hit me nobody had attempted to come up with one for the Pet Shop Boys.

In many ways, this is totally understandable, as it borders on a genuinely impossible task.  There’s a wiki page which offers what it describes as ‘a comprehensive list of songs….of officially released songs that have been performed by the band….and consists of mostly studio and BBC recordings; remixes and live recordings are not listed, unless the song has only been released in one of the two formats.’

The list runs to almost 350 songs.  Well, there have been fifteen studio albums along with more than seventy singles…..

Thinking about it further, ‘borders on a genuinely impossible task’ is an understatement.  I reckon you could ask 14,300 PSB fans for a Top 10, and you’d get 14,300 different lists.  Oh, the reason for homing in on 14,300 is simply down it being the capacity of the OVO Hydro in Glasgow where myself and Rachel last saw them play live back in May 2022, and although it was, in effect, a ‘greatest hits’ show (26 songs all in), we were struck by how many different people were saying on the way out that they wished Neil and Chris had played something that hadn’t aired that night.

I’m not taking on the task of a full-blown ICA.  Instead, here’s one based on tracks that weren’t played at the Hydro….call it an ICA of the lesser-known tracks.  I reckon it still makes for a more than decent listen.

SIDE A

1. I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind Of Thing

The original version can be found on Very, the duo’s fifth studio album, released in September 1993.  A few months later, in November 1993, a remixed version was issued as a single.  Neil and Chris chose to be quite radical in that a three-minute incredibly immediate pop song was remixed by Beatmasters, with an additional two minutes, while the house music style piano opening being replaced by something rather grand, orchestral and epic. As I’ve mentioned before, while I initially wasn’t all that fussed about the remix, it has grown on me over the years and looking back with the benefit of hindsight, it was the right sort of big and bouncy remix needed to complement the huge success of the previous single, Go West.  But I still feel it goes on for maybe 30-45 seconds too long, and so it’s the album version which opens the ICA.

2. Paninaro

The b-side of Suburbia, the duo’s fourth single which dates from 1986 has long been one of the most loved among the fan base, and I suspect that has much to do with the majority of the vocal, albeit more spoken than sung, being provided by Chris Lowe.  There’s a spoken sample at the two-and-a-half minute mark:-

I don’t like country-and-western. I don’t like rock music. I don’t like, I don’t like rockabilly or rock ’n’ roll particularly. Don’t like much really, do I? But what I do like I love passionately.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the enigmatic Chris Lowe in his own words.  He hasn’t really changed in almost 40 years.

3. Minimal

From Fundamental, the ninth studio album, which was released in 2006, and later issued as a single, becoming PSB’s thirty-seventh Top 20 hit in the UK.  Alex Petrides, in his review for The Guardian, described Minimal as sounding pleasingly like Kraftwerk mounting a defence of the Turner prize. A bit mind of Pseud’s Corner perhaps, but I know exactly what he’s getting at.

4. Your Funny Uncle

PSB have always been famed and loved for their more tender numbers, with, arguably, Being Boring being the best of them.  But it’s long been the song with which they have closed their shows, and so doesn’t qualify for inclusion on the ICA.  Instead, I’m including one from 1989, a b-side on what was a limited 7″ edition of It’s Alright. It’s based on a true story, with the lyric composed by Neil after he had attended the funeral of a friend who had died from AIDS. Here’s what he had to say about the song:-

“All the details are true: the cars in slow formation, and so on. He did have an uncle, who had been in the army all of his life and suddenly found himself at the funeral of his evidently gay nephew who’d died of Aids. I think it must have been quite a difficult situation for him, but he was really nice and dignified and spoke to all of his nephew’s friends. I had to give a reading, and the bit I read was from the book of Revelations…at the end it says there’s somewhere where there’s no pain or fear, and I found it a really moving piece of prose, and attached it to the end of the song.”

5. Love Is A Bourgeois Construct (Nighttime Radio Edit)

By the time of Electric, the twelfth studio album, which was released in 2013, PSB had more or less given up concerning themselves whether or not any singles made it into the charts.  This was reflected by the fact that they were largely digital only-releases, made available via downloads.  Love Is….was actually the third single lifted from Electric, and it was edited down from its near seven-minutes in length to a more radio-friendly four and a bit minutes.  The tongue-in-cheek title applied to the edit is another sign that the boys weren’t fussed about being A-listed by any radio station.

SIDE B

1. A Cloud In A Box
2. The Truck Driver and His Mate

I’ve decided to open this side of the ICA with two what would, in old-fashioned ways, be described as obscure b-sides.  It was one of the great joys of using the blog a couple of years back to have an in-depth look at all the PSB singles and discovering genuinely brilliant songs for the first time.

A Cloud In A Box was released in September 2016. It came as part of the digital download with Say It To Me, the fourth single to be lifted from Super, the thirteenth studio album.  I described Say It To Me as a banger of a tune which, during PSB’s imperious phase, would have certainly smashed into the higher echelons of the singles chart. I went on to say that describe A Cloud In A Box as being a thousand times bigger in terms of it being a banger, suggesting it was Faithless meets Left To My Own Devices. I’m not exaggerating.

The Truck Driver and His Mate dates from 1996, and was one of the b-sides on Before, the advance single from sixth studio album, Bilingual.  It’s an absolute joy, driven along by a rocky and raucous, nay, make that a glamorous beat, topped with a lyric packed with innuendo and humour.

3. This Must Be The Place I Waited Years To Leave

It’s A Sin may well be is the best-known of the songs that Neil has written about his unhappy time attending a school which had all sorts of strict rules, but I’ve always had a real soft spot for this album track from 1990’s Behaviour.  There’s also a hidden depth to this one, as Neil would later reveal that the song title, and indeed the sentiments within, were meant to refer to the fall of communism in eastern Europe. I also love that quite a bit of the tune feels like something New Order might have written.

4. Pandemonium

In which the duo write and record a pop song in 2009 that could have come from just about any time in their career from the 90s onwards.  It can be found on Yes, the tenth studio album.  It was later revealed Pandemonium had been written with the idea that it be recorded by Kylie Minogue, but for some unknown reason, it was turned down – as indeed were a handful of other PSB-written songs.  Neil was later to remark ‘ I had no idea she was so picky’.    I still think everyone missed a trick by not releasing this as a single.

5. Shameless

We’re shameless, we will do anything
To get our fifteen minutes of fame
We have no integrity, we’re ready to crawl
To obtain celebrity we’ll do anything at all

Who said PSB didn’t have a sense of humour?   The b-side of Go West, the immense #1 hit from September 1993.  I suppose having a fair idea that the Village People cover was going to be so memorable, then the task was to create, write, record and deliver something of their own that was equally majestic.

So there you have it.  One in which all the really big and best-known songs had to be excluded.  And there’s still plenty left off that would make for a fabulous Volume 2.

Oh, and if you fancy having a listen as to how ICA 389 might sound as a stand-alone album:-

SIDE A (18:27)

SIDE B (21:45)

 

JC

 

The 36th and final instalment of what has turned out to be the most epic series ever to have appeared on the blog.  It’s been a bit of a challenge as there were a lot of tunes I didn’t know beforehand when I was putting the pieces together, but I had a feeling from the outset that it was all going to work out fine given the real quality, not just of the singles, but the b-sides and additional tracks recorded by the Pet Shop Boys over what is now a 40-year career (and counting!).

Hotspot remains the most recent studio album, dating back to January 2020.  The intervening years have seen the eventual staging of a triumphant world-tour, with the sets dominated by all the big hits, while earlier this year, on 16 June, there was the release of SMASH, the complete collection of Pet Shop Boys singles in chronological order.

I genuinely had no idea that release was in the pipeline when I started this series all the way back on 22 January.  (And, for what it’s worth, I’m actually writing this on 30 May 2023, as I was determined to write everything up in advance of the release of SMASH, so that I didn’t find myself relying on the contents of an illustrated booklet in which all the songs are discussed).

Two CDs to wrap things up, both courtesy of inclusion with different editions of Annually – CDs that I actually have managed to order through the PSB website in advance of their actual release.

The Pet Shop Boys Annually 2021

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – Cricket Wife
mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – West End Girls (Lockdown Version)

The former is a very unusual song.  It is ten minutes in length and has a really ambitious chamber/orchestral-pop feel about it.  It is totally unlike anything else Neil and Chris have ever written or recorded.  It really threw me when it arrived in the post shortly after its release on 16 April 2021.

The PSB website provides a bit more background detail:-

Annually 2021 will be accompanied by a two-track CD single featuring a dramatic new song, almost ten minutes long, entitled “Cricket wife”….. it uses orchestral sounds and was written as a classical-style instrumental piece by Chris over which Neil sang lyrics taken from a poem he had written. Both Chris and Neil recorded their parts at their homes, and Pete Gleadall mixed the final track.

I’ve really grown to like it as a stand-alone piece of music, but it did take a good number of listens.

It is perhaps, because it was such a challenging listen, that the duo used lockdown to revisit the breakthrough hit as the other track issued with Annually 2021.  I’ve already included the version in one of the monthly one-hour mixes which have been known to pop up on the blog, and I’ve a feeling it’ll go down well with most of you.

The Pet Shop Boys Annually 2023

Annually 2022 didn’t have a CD.  But things got back to normal in 2023 with the inclusion of Lost, an EP containing demos of songs written in 2015, for potential inclusion on the album Super, but ultimately not taken forward and developed.

There’s a section in Annually 2023 dedicated to the CD in which Neil explains “It’s not that we didn’t like them, it was that they didn’t fit into the album.  The idea for this EP was spurred by the realisation that the songs may not otherwise be heard, and they all sit together quite well, production-wise – they’re all supersonic”

The four tracks were given a digital release on the same day as the now long sold-out Annually 2023:-

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – The Lost Room
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – I Will Fall
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Skeletons In The Closet
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Kaputnik

At the same time as Annually 2023 was published, a new home demo recording was made available via a YouTube video.  I think it’s fair to say that it is a poignant way to wrap things up:-

And with that, it is time to say farewell to this series.  I hope you’ve enjoyed listening and reading as much as I’ve enjoyed researching and writing.

Feel free to drop in again next Sunday for the start of what will be a new series on this familiar theme. 

JC

Another single from Hotspot was issued on 24 April 2020.  There was a digital and CD release, along with a 12″ vinyl version.

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – I Don’t Wanna (radio edit)

It’s about 40 seconds shorter than the album version.  Again, like much of the later material from the Pet Shop Boys, the tunes from the Hotspot era, all the way from the advance singles through to the b-side of this, the fourth and final single, were all new to me when I reached the stage of putting the various pieces together for this series.   I Don’t Wanna is one of the rare times I’ve been disappointed, as it’s all just a bit functional and dull.

The CD and 12″ single were dominated by remixes, but there was one new song kept back for use as a b-side:-

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – New Boy

This one caught me by surprise.  After all the twists and turns and changes of direction in recent years, here’s a ballad that wouldn’t have been out of place on the earliest albums or as a b-side to some of the biggest hit singles back in the 80s.  It is classic PSB, and an interview with a journalist in Australia reveals that the song indeed, did have very deep roots:-

“One or two years ago I was listening to the cassette demos and I’ve always liked this song we wrote at the time we wrote ‘Rent.’ It’s called ‘New Boy.’ I was at Smash Hits at the time. It’s about two girls on the phone in some suburban area, they see a new boy in town and are talking about him. It’s got a very strong melody, I’ve always remembered it. Anyway, Chris and I finally finished it off after however many years….”

(with thanks to Wayne Struder‘s hugely invaluable fan site, Commentary, for that particular snippet of info).

I Don’t Wanna remains the last ‘actual’ single that the Pet Shop Boys have released.  There have been a few more editions of Annually that have contained CDs, and I’ll cover them off next week in what will be the very final part of the series.

JC

Hotspot was released, again to great critical and fan acclaim, on 24 January 2020, entering the album charts at #3.  Ticket sales were incredibly healthy for the proposed European and UK tour, the plans and rehearsals for which were at an advanced stage.

Six days later, the World Health Organisation declared the COVID-19 virus as a public health emergency of international concern, and by 11 March 2020, it was officially referred to as a pandemic. 

The world changed forever, and clearly not in a positive way.  The tour was cancelled, put off for at least 12 months.  As it turned out, the plans for 2021 were also shelved, and Dreamworld wouldn’t take place until 2022.

The latest edition of Pet Shop Boys Annually was already at the printers, ready for publication on 12 April 2020.  This time around, it came with an additional EP on CD, consisting of 21 minutes of music that had been written by Neil and Chris for a 2019 stage version of My Beautiful Laundrette, which had originally been made as a film in 1985. 

The CD was never given a commercial release outside of it being packaged with the hardback book, and copies on Discogs have an asking price on the other side of £50.  In May 2021, the music was released in digital form.

The release consisted of mostly instrumental pieces, but there were two tracks with vocals, one of which, No Boundaries, had been previously made available as a b-side with the Dreamland single in October 2019.  Here’s the other track with vocals delivered by Neil:-

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Angelic Thug

As it turned out, there would be one more single lifted from Hotspot, albeit there was no tour with which to have a tie-in.  But that’s for next week.

JC

The bells to ring in the new year had barely stopped ringing when the Pet Shop Boys issued a third advance single from the forthcoming new album.

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Monkey Business (radio edit)

2 January 2020 was the digital release date, just three weeks ahead of Hotspot, the fourteenth studio album.  A CD version would be in the shops in early February, slightly after the album was put on sale.

Monkey Business was another well-received track.  The duo have been more than happy to describe it as a party song, one which pays a bit of lip service to a number of upbeat, almost funky tunes that had been riding high at the top of the charts over much of the past couple of years.

Its backstory is now well known, thanks to Neil telling it on each occasion it has been played live over the years. The duo were on tour and had reached Austin, Texas when they chanced upon a larger-than-life man at their hotel who explained that he was in town “On monkey business—just playing around”, which Neil then used as inspiration to put him in a song as a shameless hipster who lived purely for the high-life. 

Given all that, the choice of B-side for this one was interesting:-

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – At Rock Bottom

Everyone talks about
their loss and the legacy
Sharing condolences
and offering sympathy
But at rock bottom
what got him?

It’s all about
It’s all about
It’s all about
It’s all about drugs

Almost as if to say to anyone who wants to live a life of Monkey Business that there’s very likely a price to pay.

Again, it’s a more than decent b-side.  As the vast majority of them have been over the years.

JC

Just two months after the release of Dreamland, another new single in advance of the new studio album was released:-

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Burning The Heather

Having gone all synth-pop last time out, this time out it’s a slow-paced number with its sound relying somewhat on an acoustic guitar, courtesy of the wonderfully-talented Bernard Butler.

I’ve long been fond of those occasional moments when PSB slow things down and move away from the clubs and dance floor.  I think Neil Tennant is a much under-appreciated song-writer/lyricist, and Burning The Heather, if offered to, and accepted by, any one of the many 21st Century male pop stars whose songs of pain and anxiety sell by the millions, then this would have been a hit.

It’s a complex lyric, open to a number of possible interpretations, one of which is that it was inspired by the true life story of an elderly man who took committed suicide on the moors of Northern England, but who was not properly identified for more than a year as a result of him having lived as a loner who suffered from depression in London.  It’s a very sad take on things, but it does fit the narrative, albeit the final verse does suggest he was open to having his mind changed about his plans to end his life.

The initial digital-only release on 14 November was later accompanied by a 7″ single on 13 December 2019, with this being the additional song in both instances:-

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Decide

An electronic classic in which Chris Lowe takes lead vocal for much of the song, albeit through his usual trick of having his vocal go through a distorter.  Is it too obvious to say that this is PSB offering their take on the truly awful state of the nation as it approached the impending General Election with the expectation that the Tories under Boris Johnson would get their mandate to ‘Get Brexit Done’. 

2020 was fast approaching.  The Pet Shop Boys had a new album ready for release, after which they would embark on Dreamworld: The Greatest Hits Live tour, in which the duo would visit 24 cities in Europe and the UK between 1 May and 24 June, with more festival dates and cities in the Americas, Asia and Australia likely to be added for later in the year.

SPOILER ALERT :  The tour, like all major music events in 2020, was cancelled as COVID rampaged its way across the globe.

JC

Last week’s piece made an observation that while the fanbase was happy with whatever direction PSB would head, the general public wasn’t too enamoured by the political slant on the songs issues with the 2019 edition of Pet Shop Boys Annually.

Here’s wiki:-

“Dreamland” is a song by English synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys featuring English synth-pop band Years & Years (the solo project of singer Olly Alexander). It was released on 11 September 2019 as the lead single from Pet Shop Boys’ fourteenth studio album, Hotspot.

During the writing process, Neil Tennant explained that the title of the track came when Alexander told the duo that he had just visited the Dreamland Margate amusement park. According to an interview in The Guardian, the trio wrote the track in 2017, with Alexander explaining, “I felt like I didn’t want to write about politics simply because I felt like I should but then last week I wrote a song with the Pet Shop Boys. It’s inspired by a fairground in Margate called Dreamland, but while I was writing it, Neil Tennant said to me, ‘This makes sense right now with Trump closing the borders.’ The song became something that touched on what’s going on in the world. I’d write lyrics and he’d say, ‘No, it needs to be more direct.’ He’d take a simple line and interject a subversive political statement. That’s the challenge as a pop writer, to do both at once”.

mp3: Pet Shop Boys (ft. Years and Years) – Dreamland

This one doesn’t sound like any sort of protest song.  It’s synth-pop at its purest and most danceable, with an incessant beat that sounds great coming out of the radio.  While it’s not entirely in keeping with my own tastes, It should have been a smash hit, the sort that gets you invited to appear on stages at free music festivals organised by pop radio stations, but I guess the music industry frowns upon OAPs trying to be hip and down with the kids.  As it was, PSB ended up debuting the song live at the Radio 2 live festival in Hyde Park, London on 15 September 2019, just a few days after the CD and digital versions had been made available.

Two new songs were on the CD:-

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – An Open Mind
mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – No Boundaries

It was now 35 years since the debut single, and still PSB were capable of jaw-dropping moments when it came to the quality of b-sides. 

The fourteenth studio album was still a few months away from being released, but if these hadn’t made the cut, then it was understandable that fans were excited by what was coming. 

JC

Last week’s piece focussed on the CD release which came with the book Pet Shop Boys Annually 2017.

The 2018 version of the book didn’t have any additional CD, and there was no new music released in that year.  It all meant that the next release would  be via the 2019 edition of Pet Shop Boys Annually, with a four-track CD:-

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Give Stupidity A Chance
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – On Social Media
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – What Are We Going To Do About The Rich?
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – The Forgotten Child

At the time of its release (5 February 2019), Neil Tennant said of the EP, “It contains three satirical songs and one rather sad song. I think it’s because of the times we’re living through.”

You’ve probably worked out from the song titles alone that the sad song is the final track on the EP.

I don’t have a copy of Pet Shop Boys Annually 2019 (it’s going for £85 on Discogs) and I haven’t a copy of the 12″, so these songs are completely new to me.  

Given it was the first completely new material in more than three years, it most likely took fans by surprise, but it’s another example of the duo going in the most unlikely of directions.  In an era when next to nobody was doing protest songs or agit-pop, material of this nature has to be welcomed.  I’m not making any claim that they are among the best PSB tunes over their stellar career, but it’s a very worthy EP, albeit it would have been more of a statement if it had been given a wider and general release rather than through the website as part of a package with a hardback book

Maybe in response to possible criticisms of this nature, the songs were issued to shops on 12″ vinyl.  Copies of this retail for quite modest sums, and there’s plenty available on Discogs, which perhaps reflects that the general public weren’t too keen on the left-wing version of PSB.

JC

I thought very long and hard about whether to include Undertow in the series.

Technically, the eighth track on Super was never released as a single, but it is out there on Discogs, on CD, with an asking price of over £100.

It came as part of Pet Shop Boys Annually, a hardback book that was released via the official online store on 12 April 2017.  

Annually has now become something of a tradition – it wasn’t something I was aware of until a few years later (and which I’ll expand upon in a later entry in this series) – with a number of the books coming with CDs containing otherwise unavailable bits of music, more often than not, but not always, in remix form of songs from the back catalogue.

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Undertow (Tuff City Kids remix)

The other two tracks on the CD were also remixes, one being a very old favourite and the other being another of the most popular tunes on Super:-

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – Left To My Own Devices (Super Version)
mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – Burn (Baba Stiltz remix)

The former involved Stuart Price, the producer of the two most recent albums, visiting the much-loved tune from the 80s and giving it a contemporary twist.  Given that the original is up there with my all-time favourite PSB tunes, you’d imagine I’d dislike this take on it……but I’m happy to give it pass marks.

The latter is more than ten minutes long, and while it will have its fans among you, it does illustrate why, for the most part, I’ve shied away from featuring remixes throughout this series.

JC

The next single to be lifted from Super was issued on CD and digital form on 16 September 2016.

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Say It To Me (new radio mix)

Say It To Me is a banger of a tune, and the new radio mix doesn’t actually sound all that different from the album version.  In days gone by, this would have smashed into higher echelons of the singles chart.

Here’s the two new tracks that came with it:-

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – A Cloud In A Box
mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – The Dead Can Dance

See that comment I made about the single being a banger?    Well, feel free to take and multiply it by a thousand to get the best description of A Cloud In A Box.  Faithless meets Left To My Own Devices.   It’s rather wonderful.

The Dead Can Dance is another song that deserved a far better fate than relegation to a b-side.   It’s not anywhere as immediate as A Cloud…..but with a hypnotic and repetitive beat and rhythm, there’s a claim to be made that’s it is another of the many dozens of three-minute-long PSB classics that not many have heard before.

JC

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

The thirteenth studio album, Super, was released on 1 April 2016.  It was warmly received by critics and fans alike, with many commenting on how it felt like a companion piece to Electric.  One pithy review from a UK newspaper opens with ‘Without breaking new ground, Super ticks all the right boxes.’, and ends with ‘Neil Tennant still sounds simultaneously wry and mournful and Chris Lowe’s euphoric surges still tickle both heart and body. They are indestructible.’

The fan base was still there and the album entered the charts at #3.  Nobody was paying too much attention to the singles, but as this series hopefully has shown, that often meant something rather special or different wasn’t picked up from new songs as b-sides.

The second single from the new album was issued on 24 June 2016.

Pmp3: Pet Shop Boys – Twenty-Something (radio edit)

It’s about a minute or so shorter than the album version.  Twenty-something weeks into this series, and it’s nigh-on impossible to find something new to say about the PSB and their songs.  I like this one…..I probably would have hated it in the 80s and 90s, and I’m not sure about the 00s.  But some slack has got to be cut…..it’s not one I’d place high up on any rundown, but I wouldn’t have it propping up the table either.

Released digitally and as a CD single, there were, once again, two new tracks as B-sides:-

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – The White Dress
mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – Wiedersehen

The official PSB website describes The White Dress as ‘a haunting electronic track’ while provides the information that Wiedersehen was ‘a piano ballad featuring Rufus Wainwright on backing vocals.’

Given that some of the minor criticism levelled at Super had been its lack of slowed down and more mournful material, it is something of a surprise to find these two songs sneaked out in such a low-key fashion.  But then again, PSB have always looked to reward the fans who go digging deep.

JC

As last week’s chapter revealed, Record Store Day on 19 April 2014 had seen the release of a 12″ single.  The next single wouldn’t appear in digital form until 16 February 2016

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – The Pop Kids

The track was initially made available to anyone who pre-ordered Super, the forthcoming studio album.

It’s a catchy number, one which includes a lot of the musical tricks and hooks that had been deployed over the decades.  It also has a strong story-like lyric, telling the tale of two friends in London in the 90s. who found each other from studying at the same university, having a real love of pop/dance music.

Just over a month later, The Pop Kids was released as a CD single and in two digital bundles, with the majority of tracks being remixes of the lead song, along with two other songs which wouldn’t be included on Super.

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – In Bits
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – One Hit Wonder

The CD and digital bundles sold enough to copies to enable an expanded chart placing of #128.  I’m only mentioning this as it proved to be the final time a PSB single would find itself in the charts.

The two b-sides are fine, if not totally essential.  In Bits is a mid-tempo number, while One Hit Wonder is more or less an instrumental, that was seemingly written back in the early 80s but not recorded until 2014 as the theme for a Berlin-based online music show.  (the original date of composition makes sense as it has the feel of a light but airy pop tune from the era, reminding me a lot of very early Depeche Mode.)

In light of this being the final chart hit for PSB, I’m going to gradually bring the series to an end by focussing on just one release each week from now on in, taking it through the summer months and into the autumn. It means I’ve more time to consider what to bring up next on Sundays.

JC

I finished off last week by saying I was going to get my hands on a copy of Electric, the twelfth studio album from the Pet Shop Boys, that was released in July 2013.

It has proved to be every bit as great as was made out in that Guardian Review from Alexis Petrides.

The third single from the album was released on 1 September:-

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Love Is A Bourgeois Concept (nighttime radio edit)

It’s an edited version of one of the high spots on the album.  As I played the CD, I thought the tune reminded me of something.  I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.  Thankfully, wiki can be handy.

Love Is a Bourgeois Construct   is based on the 1982 instrumental “Chasing Sheep Is Best Left to Shepherds”, a minimalist piece by Michael Nyman, which was initially based on a hook by Henry Purcell.

It was used in the Peter Greenaway film, The Draughtman’s Contract, and that was the reason I had filed it away in a very obscure part of my memory.

mp3: Michael Nyman – Chasing Sheep Is Best Left To Shepherds

The single was primarily a digital release, but there was a limited number of CDs pressed up. I’m guessing it was very limited, as the going rate for a copy on the second-hand market is about £50.

Alongside a number of remixes, two otherwise unavailable tracks came out with this single

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – Entschuldigung!
mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – Get it online

The former is a song based on constantly apologising for not being able to speak German. 

Ich nicht sprechen Deutsch!
Ich nicht sprechen Deutsch!
I said
Ich nicht sprechen Deutsch!
Ich nicht sprechen Deutsch!
Entschuldigung!

It is yet another instance when Neil and Chris come up with something completely out of leftfield which straddles the fine line between bonkers brilliant and bonkers nonsense.  I’m very much, based on just three listens, convinced it is brilliant and up there with as good a b-side as they have released.

The latter is kind of linked in that there’s a huge Kraftwerk influence on a track which was largely composed by Chris with his vocal contribution being deliberately distorted.  Oh, and there’s also much use made of languages other than English to deliver phrases which seemingly all translate into consumer-speak.  It’s not as immediate as Entschuldigung!, but it is growing on me.

Love Is A Bourgeois Concept didn’t make it into the Top 100, but as I’ve mentioned before, the chart positions of the singles no longer seemed to be an issue.

The next single appeared on 3 November:-

mp3: Pet Shop Boys (feat. Example) – Thursday (radio edit)

In listening to Electric, without being fully aware of what were the future singles, I reckoned this stood a great chance.   It’s very radio friendly – PSB wearing their lightweight pop hats – and it also has a co-vocal from Example, an English rapper who had been enjoying a fair amount of chart success since bursting onto the scene in 2006.   His real name is Elliot Gleave, and his stage name comes from his initials, E.G., the abbreviation of the Latin phrase exempli gratia (“for example”).

It’s a decent enough pop song with a bit of rap thrown in to try and differentiate it at the end, but other than Chris’s deadpan delivery of ‘Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday’ as the song moves along, it didn’t leave too much of an impression on me.  It’s the sort of song I could imagine Robbie Williams wishing he’d written and recorded.

Once again, it was primarily a digital release, with a limited number of CDs and a 12″ vinyl copy pressed up.  As with the previous single, two otherwise unavailable tracks were part of the release:-

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – No More Ballads
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Odd Man Out

The former is a bitter-sweet love song that the PSB seem so capable of writing at the drop of a hat.  This wouldn’t have sounded out of place back in the days when all the singles and albums went to #1.  The ‘relegation’ of the song to become almost a throwaway b-side is really down to the fact it wouldn’t have been a good fit on the new album.

The latter is a remarkable song, one that I’m really surprised wasn’t held back for release as a single in later years. It wouldn’t have been a hit as it is far too downbeat and depressing a tale for that, but it would have generated a fair bit of media chat, both printed and digital, if Neil and Chris had decided to give it some promotion.

Odd Man Out is based entirely on the plot/story of Victim, a 1961 film which is regraded as the first to deal sympathetically and openly with homosexuality. And while it is true that society’s attitudes had moved on a fair bit over the next 50 years, there was still much to be concerned or angry about to the extent that Neil and Chris would feel the need to pen such a song, complete with historical references, as well as having the final 30 seconds feature dialogue from the film.  Listen and weep quietly for those whose lives have been made miserable by homophobes, and then think again about those who live their lives under oppressive regimes where it still a punishable crime to have feelings of love for someone of the same sex.

Thursday was a relative success in that it reached #61 in the singles chart.

There would be one final 45 lifted from Electric:-

This was a 12″ single for Record Store Day on 19 April 2014. 

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Fluorescent (Indio Mix)
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Fluorescent (Cali Mix)

Only 1000 copies pressed.   £165 – £250 is the asking price if you want to pick up a copy on the second-hand market.  (And no, I don’t have a copy!!!!!)

It’s obviously different mixes from the album version, while the lyrics are quite different, with a self-effacing question being asked…..‘Are You Past Your Sell-By Date?’

Given Part 25 of the series will be with you next week, you can take a stab at the answer.  I’ll be disappointed if you get it wrong.

JC

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.

JC

Last time around, I mentioned the performance at the closing ceremony  of the 2012 Olympics in which Neil and Chris performed West End Girls as they were cycled around the running track on chariots.  The photo above is the proof………..

In September 2012, the duo’s 11th studio album, Elysium was unveiled.   Rather unusually, it was not accompanied by any new 45, although the Olympic-themed Winner, that had been released digitally back in July and physically in August,  is one of its twelve tracks.   The next single hit the shops on 12 October:-

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Leaving

A fine pop tune.   The PSB website offers this take on it:-

“It’s looking at the old cliché of ‘love doesn’t die’, so familiar in pop songs, and looking at the death aspect of it. It’s comparing the idea of love not dying with the fact that when a person dies there’s a sense that they don’t really die because although they’re not physically present their memory is still present and therefore in a way they have a presence in your life.”

Given that the boys were now both comfortably into their 50s,it’s no real surprise that the subject matters being covered in their songs were now quite different from the era when they sat atop of the single charts.

Leaving reached #44.   It remains the last time a PSB single cracked the Top 50 in the UK.

It was released in digital and physical formats (CD and vinyl), with a number of remix efforts made available.  CD1 contained two otherwise unavailable songs:-

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – Hell
mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – In His Imagination

The former is a list song.   Possibly the PSB equivalent of REM‘s It’s The End Of The World…..or maybe not!!!   The named individuals are all folk who have their own place in hell (or in the instance of one person still alive will end up there – assuming you believe in Hell is an actual thing).  Most are political despots/dictators, but mention is also made of a few serial killers.  It’s an odd one…..but surprisingly catchy given the subject matter.

The latter is a short story of sorts in that it tells the tale of someone who is bored rigid with a dead-end job but dreams of better days.    It’s a mid-tempo number that doesn’t really go anywhere special and isn’t one of the more memorable b-sides.

The third and final 45 from Elysium was released on 31 December 2012, which meant it was lost amidst all that was going on, with everyone looking back primarily on the previous 12 months.  It wasn’t a straight lift from the album as the track was given a different mix and its length was reduced by a minute or so.   

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Memory Of The Future (single mix)

It sunk without a trace, seemingly reaching #111 in the UK.   To be honest, that’s about all it deserved.  It’s not close to being a decent 45.

Again, there was a digital and physical release, with a number of remix efforts on offer alongside three two otherwise unavailable songs, all of which went to show that the duo were certainly still very prolific……or did it?

mp3: Pet Shop Boys -Listening
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – One Night
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Inside

Listening was not an entirely new song.  It had been written back in 2012 and offered to Morten Harket, best known as lead singer with A-Ha, the Danish Norwegian  group that had enjoyed international success in the mid-80s.   Harket had gone on to include the song on his solo album Out Of My Hands, with PSB offering their own take a couple of years on.  Not knowing the original, I can’t offer any opinion on whether it’s an improvement or not…and it’s not a good enough song to make me want to go and find out

One Night was another old song.  It seemingly dates from 2007 and was written with the intention of having it recorded by Kylie Minogue, but she (or her advisers) seemingly turned it down.   It’s a more than decent romantic sounding ballad, so maybe it just wasn’t right for her at that particular time.  It would, I reckon, have been interesting to hear her take on it.

Inside was an entirely new song, one that was considered for inclusion on Elysium but left off at a late stage.  It’s another ballad and rather lovely;  but ultimately, what you had to round off a busy and high-profile year in PSB world was a low-key release, sneaked out almost under the cover of darkness on the final day of 2012, with none of the energy and fun that had long been associated with the duo. 

It also turned out to be their final involvement with  Parlophone Records. As it turned out, there wasn’t too long to wait for the next instalment in the Pet Shop Boys story.

JC

2011.  

The most activity came through being the special guests of Take That as the fully-reformed five-piece boy band embarked on a tour lasting from 27 May to 1 August, and consisting of twenty-nine shows in outdoor sports stadia in the UK and Ireland, followed by six similar efforts in mainland Europe. The estimated audience across the entire tour was 1.8 million.  Pet Shop Boys played a 45-minute set each time, consisting mostly of the biggest and most popular hit singles.

2012. 

Format, a 2xCD collection of many of the b-sides issued between 1996 and 2009 is released in February. 

3 July 2012. 

A new digital single is released. 

6 August 2012

The new single is issued in physical form.

It all comes in the middle of London preparing for and then hosting the 2012 Olympic Games (27 July – 12 August) during which Team GB bags itself a record number of medals and the country is engulfed by a feel-good factor.  The PSB single is very appropriately named, and its artwork resembles a medal ceremony podium.

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Winner

Neil and Chris are quick to say that the mid-tempo number has nothing to with sport and that it was written about being part of something like Eurovision or the X-Factor. Nevertheless, the promo video has a sports theme in that it features a real-life roller derby team from London and the introduction into the team of a new transgender rookie. 

It’s a real feel good number, and very appropriate for the times and the mood of the nation.  It stalled at #86…………..

Three songs were added to the physical release:-

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – A Certain ‘Je ne sais quoi’
mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – The Way Through The Woods
mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – I Started A Joke

The first of these demonstrates that, even after all these years, Neil and Chris can come up with a b-side that carries a real punch.   It’s a million miles better than Winner, and it’s incredible to think, again, that the duo had quietly slipped out, without any fanfare, one of the best tunes they had written in years.

I’m indebted to Commentary, the ridiculously informative PSB fan site curated by Wayne Studer for otherwise hard-to-find information on the second track, the credits list of which on the back of the CD runs to three producers (including Neil and Chris), four engineers, a mixer, six individual backing vocalists and an unknown number from a backing vocal group who prove to act as a choir.   Oh, and a co-writing credit for Rudyard Kipling.

Wayne informs visitors to his site that it stems from a fresh idea that Neil and Chris hoped could develop, whereby they would set famous poems to music, specifically for schoolchildren to sing.  It really is among the strangest and most experimental tracks they have ever recorded – as far removed from any of the hit singles as can be imagined – with a lengthy, but very gentle near two-minutes worth of what feels entirely like incidental music to a film or TV programme before any the delivery of the poem begins. 

Given this, it would have been fair to anticipate the words/lyrics to be of the spoken variety, but it’s a singing effort which seriously tests Neil’s range, especially as he tries to match the singing from the choir. And then it gets incredibly weird and otherworldly.

The final track is a cover.  As you night imagine, a lot of studio time was required to complete The Way Through The Woods, and while they were recording, the news broke that Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees had passed away.  Neil and Chris decided to record one of his songs as a tribute and then chose to include it on Winner.

There’s one final postscript to all this.

Pet Shop Boys appeared at the closing ceremony of the London Olympics on 12th August, a short two-minute segment in which West End Girls was performed as the duo were cycled around the running track on chariots.

On 10th September, the day after the 2012 Paralympics were completed, the streets of London played host to a ‘Parade of Champions’ in which the host nation’s medallists were celebrated, an event which went out live across three different TV channels to even more millions of people watching at home.  The Pet Shop Boys were in among it all, performing Winner, West End Girls and Go West.

Kind of surreal eh?

This has been a long posting, and so I’ll return to later releases from 2012 next time around.  But you’ll need to show a little bit of patience, as next Sunday will be turned over to revealing the #1 entry in the 60 albums at 60 rundown.

JC

Back in 2010, Record Store Day was still an idea worth getting behind.  Pet Shop Boys announced that they would be participating on 17 April 2010, with the release of a 7″ single, limited to 1,000 copies.

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – Love Life

It wasn’t an entirely new song. It had been written back in the early 2000s and given to nu-disco outfit Alcazar, who subsequently enjoyed a Top 10 hit with it in their native Sweden.  PSB resurrected the song for RSD 2010. 

The b-side of the single was of a studio version of a song that had only previously been heard when recorded for the John Peel Show session back in 2002.

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – A Powerful Friend

The introduction to A-side starts off like a Pet Shop Boy song, the verse sounds like a Pet Shop Boys song, while the chorus couldn’t be anything else.  

The B-side on the other hand……..I just don’t get it.   Does nothing for me.  I’ll leave it at that.

The important thing is that the recording and release of the single had the purpose of assisting small, independent record shops, and whatever copies participating stores would have received would have sold out very quickly on the day, hopefully from PSB fans perhaps making their first visit to such stores in decades.

Here’s the thing.

I’ve listened to the version of A Powerful Friend that was recorded for the Peel Session and I love it.   In places, it’s unmistakably PSB at their synth-pop best, albeit the track is faster and more furious than most of their tunes, while it also incorporates harder elements within the music, almost as if they want to acknowledge the sort of material that is more normally to be heard on the Peel Show.  I’m quite surprised that Neil and Chris didn’t seek agreement with BBC Enterprises to make it the actual b-side.

The next major thing to happen was a triumphant appearance at Glastonbury on Saturday 26 June when they headlined The Other Stage, and according to many accounts, delivered the best performance across the entire three days of the festival.

A brand-new single was issued on 24 October 2010.  It sounds as if they were trying to create their own version of the sort of tunes that were massive in the clubs, thanks to new(ish) kids on the block such as Calvin Harris or David Guetta, both of whom owed a debt to PSB.   Sadly, it isn’t one of their best efforts.

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – Together

It was initially just a digital release that was followed up by physical content on 29 November. In the interim, it had appeared as the one wholly new song on Ultimate, another ‘greatest hits’ album, containing 19 singles all told.  Ultimate was also made available in an expanded form with a bonus DVD containing including 27 performances at the BBC from the past 25 years, most of them filmed for Top Of The Pops, as well as their Glastonbury 2010 show.

The physical release of Together came in a CD single and a CD maxi single.  The former had a remix of West End Girls as the additional track, while the latter contained two cover versions.

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – Glad All Over
mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – I Cried For Us

Yup.  One of these IS the song made famous by the Dave Clark Five in the 60s. The connection here is that it’s a song often sung at matches by fans of Blackpool FC, the hometown club of Chris Lowe. It might well qualify as the worst cover version they’ve ever released.

The other song was written, back in 1982, by Kate McGarrigle who enjoyed a long and successful musical career alongside her sister Anna, particularly in their native Canada.   Kate, whose name had become increasingly more after her son Rufus Wainwright shot to worldwide fame, had died at the age of 63 in January 2010, and Neil had performed I Cried For Us at a memorial concert in London in June 2010.  Shortly afterwards, a studio version of his interpretation of the song was recorded.

As mentioned last time around, the days of PSB singles going high into the UK charts were now at an end.  Together peaked at #58.

JC

2009 opened up with the Pet Shop Boys being given the Outstanding Achievement Award at the Brit Awards, and invited to perform at the close of the ceremony.  

A month later, on 16 March 2009, a new single is released.

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – Love etc.

A jaunty and upbeat number that was co-written with Xenomania, an English-based songwriting and production team that has been part of countless pop hits since their breakthrough with Girls Aloud back in 2002.

It has a poppy sing-a-long chorus and was just the latest example of PSB going off in a direction that nobody really expected.  I’m not convinced it’s their finest ever moment, but there’s no disputing that it’s one of those that would get an audience clapping along to. But there’s a sense that this is one more akin to the disposable pop market, and maybe that’s as much to do with the co-writers rather than Neil and Chris. 

If the hope had been to deliver a major return to the singles charts, and let’s not forget the Brits Award appearance a few weeks earlier would have offered a higher profile than they had enjoyed for a few years, then it didn’t pay off.  It entered at #14 and disappeared within three weeks….I’m guessing Radio 1 proved to be immune from its charms.

It was issued across a range of formats, including  a CD single, a CD remix single, an iTunes single and an iTunes EP. Oh, and a 7″ picture disk as the an early indication that a vinyl revival was on its way.

CD single

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – Gin and Jag

This is one of those songs which benefits from repeated listens.   It might initially feel like a bit of a downbeat plodder, but the nature of the music really does match the nature of the lyric.   It’s one of those that could, ostensibly, work well in the great short stories series. It’s worth explaining that Gin and Jag is a bit of slang, most often used to have a dig at upper-middle class people from the south of England whose lifestyles centre around ostentatious displays of wealth.

Don’t stare at the setting sun
and say youth is wasted on the young
Don’t stare at the setting sun
and say youth is wasted on the young

Pour another gin, love
and go easy on the tonic
Tonight I’m in a frisky mood
I’m going supersonic

Boredom deplores a vacuum
A sentiment I applaud
There’s a lot of room at the inn tonight
but I trust you won’t be bored

This is quite a view, you must admit
some would pay the earth
Be careful with that decanter, dear
Do you know how much it’s worth?

I made a pile and got out quick
I never got a gong
for services rendered but it’s not a case
of where did it all go wrong?

When we chatted on the internet
I was looking for more than a friend
In my day I was quite a catch
I wish you’d seen me then

Young and single, free and easy
handsome in my prime
“Grab it while you can” is my advice
Don’t waste your bloody time

Never married, no kids that I know of
Didn’t want a litter
Might have been a mistake, I admit
but you don’t want to end up bitter

Yes, I had a few golden years
Times I won’t forget
But don’t write me off as an old has-been
It’s not all over yet

I know my taste isn’t everyone’s
I’m a little too Gin and Jag
If you don’t want to give it a go tonight
you may as well pack your bag

When we chatted on the internet
I was looking for more than a friend
In my day I was quite a catch
I wish you’d seen me then

Don’t stare at the setting sun
and say youth is wasted on the young
Don’t stare at the setting sun
and say youth is wasted on the young

iTunes single

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – We’re All Criminals Now

Another deceptively good b-side, and IMHO, far superior to the actual single, offering a commentary on the increased used of CCTV surveillance within everyday life.

Just a week later, the tenth studio album, Yes, was released.   Coming it at #4, it delivered their best chart position since Bilingual back in 1996, but as was very much the case these days, didn’t hang around for too long and was outside the Top 100 after five weeks.

The second single to be lifted from Yes was released on 1 June 2009

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – Did You See Me Coming?

Yup…..that’s Johnny Marr on guitar again to offer his assistance as the duo again a chase of summer pop perfection.   Fair play to everyone for keeping things going after all these years, but this is the sort of song that just washes over me.   As I said a couple of weeks back, this is a period of time in which I wasn’t giving much attention to PSB, and while there’s been a couple of b-sides that have made me sit up all these years later, I don’t think I really missed out on things.

Bear with me on how this one was released.

CD 1 with two songs.  CD maxi-single with three songs. 12″ vinyl. Three (yup, count them!!!) digital bundles with different mixes as additional songs, along with the opportunity to enjoy the Pet Shop Boys Brit Awards Medley as had been performed earlier in the year.  All told, there were three new tracks that hadn’t featured on Yes.

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – After The Event
mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – The Former Enfant Terrible
mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – Up and Down

What I like about these three as a collective is that they are all very obviously PSB songs, but they are all quite different in style, tempo and delivery.  The duo clearly still cared about their craft and showed no signs of wanting to reach the stage where any old rubbish would do for b-sides, and while some of the CDs and digital bundles did go very heavily on the remix side of things, there was much to be gained from seeking out the b-sides, and fair play to them for bringing them altogether on a later compilation.

There was one final bit of product before the year was out.

Christmas was released on 14 December.  It was a five-track EP consisting of a new version of a track previously released as a fan club single in 1997, a new version of a song lifted from Very, a cover of a song by Madness, a remix of the cover and a medley involving one of their old hits with a more recent one by Coldplay.

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – It Doesn’t Often Snow At Christmas (new version)
mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – All Over The Word (new version)
mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – My Girl

The most interesting thing is that if you weren’t aware of the original, you’d very much be thinking My Girl was a PSB original.

The Christmas EP entered the charts at #40.  Not that we knew it at the time, but it proved to be the last PSB single/EP to get into the Top 40.

I suppose I better:-

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Viva La Vida/Domino Dancing

I’m saying nothing.

JC

We’ve now reached 2006, a time when I was paying no attention whatsoever to the Pet Shop Boys.  Don’t blame on the sunshine, don’t blame it on the moonlight, don’t blame it on the good times, but blame it on the blogging. 

Yup.  This was the time I got myself a cheap USB turntable and began to very seriously resurrect my lifelong passion for guitar-based indie-pop, and immersing myself in a new hobby that has led to millions of words being typed out.

I had no idea that 2006 was the year that Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe released a political album, one which reflected a falling out of love with the Labour government fronted by Tony Blair.  Much of it was to do with the Iraq war, but other factors were at play.  Here’s a few extracts from a contemporary review penned by the always excellent Alexis Petrides in The Guardian on 19 May 2006.

“Earlier this week, BBC2’s Dead Ringers compared Tony Blair to the bunker-bound Hitler. Another symbol of the PM’s decline in popularity may therefore seem otiose, but that is what the Pet Shop Boys’ ninth album turns out to be. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe spent election night 1997 not only attending the Royal Festival Hall bash, but also an aftershow party at a Park Lane hotel, where, Tennant remembered, champagne flowed and entertainment was provided by MPs “forming the government”. Until recently, Tennant could be relied upon to support the government – initially, he backed the Iraq war – but with Fundamental, things take a disagreeable turn.

“It touches on regime change, immigration, ID cards and the politics of fear. It features, the PM will doubtless be overjoyed to learn, another in what appears to be a series of Pet Shop Boys songs depicting him as a hapless lover in thrall to a hopeless partner.

“In fact, there is every chance Blair will miss the song. For one thing, he has rather more to worry about than the Pet Shop Boys implying he’s having it off with George Bush. In addition – surprisingly for a Pet Shop Boys single – I’m with Stupid seems to have mislaid its chorus amid the electronic pyrotechnics provided by Trevor Horn, still best known as Frankie Goes to Hollywood‘s producer. It’s one of two moments when Fundamental misfires. The other is Numb, the work of songwriter Diane Warren. You can see the conceptual, camp appeal of the perennially poker-faced Pet Shop Boys working with the queen of the blockbusting power ballad, but the result sounds strangely wan.

“Indefinite Leave to Remain is an aching love song conducted in the official language of the asylum seeker. Twentieth Century concerns Iraq, yet it’s really about second thoughts. “I bought a ticket to the revolution and cheered when the statues fell,” concedes Tennant. “Everyone came to destroy what was rotten but they killed off what was good as well.” On Integral, the poker face slips slightly: as he protests against ID cards, you catch the faintest tremor of rage in Neil Tennant’s voice. He sounds angry, a bracing new sensation almost 25 years into the Pet Shop Boys’ career.

“The reunion with Horn – their first since 1988’s glorious Left to My Own Devices – proves similarly inspired. Opener Psychological sounds subdued: quite an achievement, given that it features an orchestra, a harp and “a sample from the recording of the Song of the Most Holy Theotokos for Tatiana Melentieva from the album Svete Tikhiy (O Gladsome Light)“. Its understatement fits the song’s theme of nameless dread, but you have to wait until The Sodom and Gomorrah Show before Horn pulls out what you might call the Full Frankie: timpani, thwacking hi-NRG bass, cascading synth lines, jagged guitar chords and, as was once mandatory on his productions, a booming voiceover that breaks into puny-earthlings-I’ll-destroy-them-all cackling. Employ Paul Morley to write some dada-influenced cobblers for the sleeve and the image would be complete. But it’s a perfect fit, the apocalyptic hedonism of Two Tribes or Welcome to the Pleasuredome updated for a different, but equally paranoid era.

“Elsewhere, its gaze shifts away from current events. Minimal sounds pleasingly like Kraftwerk mounting a defence of the Turner prize. Casanova in Hell concerns a man who mysteriously can’t get it up in the presence of a lady (“it’s queer,” Tennant winks, “that here he can’t cast his spell”) but rewrites his life-story to cast him as a perpetually tumescent lothario: “His erection,” the song divertingly claims, “will live in history.” Cue gag about Neil Tennant getting his mouth around an erection, but instead, a more elevated thought comes to mind. Not for the first time during Fundamental, you listen wondering who else in pop music would do something like this. And not for the first time, the answer comes back: nobody.”

Three singles were released from the album, all of which are mentioned in the above review.  Strangely enough, two of the singles were the occasions when Petrides felt the album misfired.

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – I’m With Stupid

It’s an unusual sounding number that musically comes a bit close to a quiet-loud-quiet type of number (albeit the quite moments can be counted in micro-seconds) and contrary to what was suggested in the review, there is a chorus, albeit it’s very basic.  It was released on 8th May 2006, and in keeping with how all PSB singles had been performing in recent years, it went in high at #8 before falling away with three or four weeks.

It was issued on CD, DVD and, perhaps to reflect that the genre was making something of a comeback, on 7″ vinyl in the shape of a picture disc.

CD single

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – The Resurrectionist

It’s really unfair to say that this rather excellent upbeat, club effort is PSB by numbers, but it is the sort of things they had been able, over the decades, to do in their sleep.  Another of the numerous quality b-sides that I hope this series has been able to highlight.

7″ picture disc

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – Girls Don’t Cry

It’s really unfair to say that this rather excellent mid-tempo pop effort is PSB by numbers, but it is the sort of things they had been able, over the decades, to do in their sleep.  Another of the numerous quality b-sides that I hope this series has been able to highlight.

The new album appeared in the shops just two weeks after the lead-off single (and two quality b-sides!).  It followed the same pattern as the single in that it entered high at #5 but was outside the Top 75 just over a month later.  It was a long-way removed from the multi-million sales of previous decades, but there’s a sense that neither of the duo really cared, as it was all about the art nowadays.

The second single to be lifted from the album was released on 24 July 2006

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – Minimal

This is the one that Alex Petrides thought sounded pleasingly like Kraftwerk mounting a defence of the Turner prize.  I’m not qualified enough to say if that’s accurate or not, but it is a rollocking and fun song.  This one peaked in its first week at #19.

It was issued on CD, DVD, CD maxi single and 7″ clear vinyl. Given its uptempo nature, there can be no surprise that a number of the b-sides/extra tracks were remixes, but there was still space for two previously unreleased numbers.

CD single/7″ clear vinyl

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – In Private

It’s a pop song.  It’s a duet.  Elton John is on co-vocal.  It’s a re-recording of a song written originally for Dusty Springfield, and had been a Top 20 hit back in 1989.   Lots of folk will love this song, and I can see why as it has all the hallmarks and attributes of a pop classic, and in particular the hook.  But it’s not one of my favourites.

DVD single

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – Blue On Blue

I’ve no idea why this was thrown away as an extra track on a format which only the diehard fans would seek out*.   It’s not ground-breaking by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s another upbeat and danceable b-side that’s well worth a few minutes of your time.

*In February 2012, the compilation album Format would be released, consisiting of 38 tracks that had featured as b-side/remixes on various singles between 1996 and 2009.  Blue On Blue was among them.

There was one other bit of otherwise unavailable music on the DVD single:-

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – No Time For Tears (7″ mix)

It wasn’t a completely new number. It dated from 2004 when PSB had composed music  accompany a new outdoor screening of the 1925 silent film Battleship Potemkin in Trafalgar Square, London, an event which attracted 25,000 people.,  The following year, the soundtrack album was recorded in Germany, along with additional screeings over four successive nights in September 2005 in Frankfurt, Bonn, Berlin and Hamburg. 

The 7″ mix is about a minute shorter than the version on the soundtrack.

The third and final single lisfted directly from Fundamental was released on 15 October 2006.

mp3 :  Pet Shop Boys – Numb (single edit)

Alex Petrides, in his April 2006 review, had described this as a misfire.  I’m not sure if it was originally intended as a single but millions of TV viewers had, in July 2006, heard the song as it was used by the BBC to accompany the montage footage they had pulled together when the England football team had been knocked out of the 2006 World Cup, once again via a penalty shoot-out, this time at the hands of Portugal.  Neil and Chris chose to base the new edit on the way the BBC had used it in the broadcast.

This one only reached #23 and this became just the second single since the very early days to miss out on the Top 20.

It was issued on CD, CD maxi single and 7″ vinyl.

Two new songs appeared on the CD maxi single, with one of them also being included as the b-side to the 7″.

mp3 : Pet Shop Boys – Party Song

As the cliche goes, it does exactly what it says on the tin.    It’s worth recalling that a lot of angst and anger had gone into the making of Fundamental…..this might well have been their way of letting off a bit of steam.  It’s great fun.

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Bright Young Things

This is one that actually dates from 2003 in that it had been written and recorded for use in a film of the same name, but was turned down by the producers.  It does have that feel of the sort of number that would play over the closing credits.

One further track that originally appeared on Fundamental would be issued in single form. 

8th October 2007 saw the release of the album Disco 4. It contained 8 songs, six of which were PSB remixes of tracks written and originally released by The Killers, David Bowie, Yoko Onon, Madonna, Atomiser, and Rammstein.  Two PSB originals were given the treatment, one of which was also made available as a download-only single as part of the promotional activites.

mp3:  Pet Shop Boys – Integral (Perfect Immaculate Mix)

The next actual physical single would be released in March 2009.  It’ll be included in the next part of the series.

JC