Not even time to celebrate a forty-year career with a “greatest hits tour” (which last year also touched our country, in a memorable performance at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome) and with Smashencyclopedic and much needed anthology that lines up all their singles, which i Pet Shop Boys they’re back to doing things seriously and in style.
The fifteenth studio work Nonethelessin fact, not only continues with a strict rule of titles composed of a single word, but marks the return of the famous duo to the Parlophone house abandoned in 2012 after the release of the interlocutory (but, like all their studio efforts, always with some episode that makes it worth listening to) Elysium. Since then our band have released a trilogy of albums with their own record label and the production of Stuart Price, which put their foot on the accelerator with exquisitely dance songs, while not giving up occasional melodic nostalgia – in the case of the penultimate Hotspots involving on the one hand Olly Alexanderon the other hand relying on the guitar of former Suede Bernard Butler – and on the more sophisticated solutions that have made their style very recognisable.
Nonethelesscomposed largely of songs written during the pandemic, does not give up on exposing the most danceable soul of the iconic company, which since the 1980s has miraculously managed not to fall into irrelevance and not end a glorious career with guest appearances on revival broadcasts on TV all playback and distinctiveness (and above all with the usual workhorses of the “imperial phase”) but at the same time shows off some master strokes in the construction of the melodies, touching on Burt Bacharach while integrating a rudimentary electronic drum into The Secret of Happiness (shame about that slightly syrupy text) or traveling in the area Billy Joel/Elton John in In New Bohemia (which mentions Les Petites Bon-Bons, a group of gay artists and activists from Wisconsin who in the 1970s were associated with Bowie, Lou Reed and disco star Sylvester).
Neil Tennant confirms himself as an effective and engaging storyteller and recalls his arrival from Newcastle to London in 1973 in New London Boy. If the title can bring back memories New York City Boy from way back in 1999, it certainly is David Bowie – explicitly mentioned in rap together with Roxy Music – the tutelary deity, partly due to the similarity of the title with The London Boys of 1966, a bit because of that “are they girls or boys?” which can only lead back to Hello Spaceboycollaboration between the former White Duke and the Pet Shop Boys of the mid-90s and above all for the setting of the story, the scene glamthe freedom to finally be oneself even with the necessary precautions (“skinheads will mock you / call you a fag / last laugh is yours / there’s a brick in your bag“). Considered by many to be a sequel to West End Girls – but let’s not forget Metamorphosisfrom the underrated Bilingual – is undoubtedly one of the pearls of the new album.
Knowing Neil’s ability to create compelling narratives very well, this time too we are not surprised by the non-trivial ideas offered. The launch single Loneliness it just suffers from a bit of repetitiveness, but it immediately brings us back to the glories of the bestseller Very (but watching the video clip by the photographer and filmmaker Alasdair Mclellan, already active with i Saint Etienne they XXit is inevitable to think of the he-he-she triangle in Domino Dancing even if today everything is more brazen and unrestrained, with muscular bodies, shower scenes and even a glory hole). Feel is a piece initially offered to Brandon Flowers of the Killers for one of his solo albums, and is strong with a subtle but affectionate and spot-on homage to the Kraftwerk (the rhythmic base recalls Tour de France) while the second single Dancing Stara sort of poetic Bignami in music on the rise and parable of the divine Rudolf Nureyev, who arrived in Paris in 1961 breaking the rules of the Soviet regime, is part of a retromaniac trend between Holiday Of Madonna and the playful synth-pop of a top-of-the-class disciple like The Weeknd. The famous Russian dancer is not the only character object of Tennant’s attention (whose songbook is already full of references to Giacomo Casanova, a mysterious Don Juan of the 1930s who could be Hitler or Stalin, the Zazou of the 1940s who frequented the Select and Le Colisée, had long hair and listened to illegal American jazz during the Nazis): if in The Night I Fell In Love Neil and Chris mocked the homophobia of Eminemthis time in Bullet for Narcissus (musically in the territory New Orderperiod Technique) at the center is the existential dilemma of a bodyguard of Donald Trump, who must accept the idea of being able to die to protect a man he hates.
Another anthology highlight is the conclusion Love is the Lawexistential, raw and lyrical reflection by Oscar Wilde after the French prison while observing in an area the cruising clandestine between men (terms like trick And trade they are not used randomly, in American slang they indicate “to tow”). It is not fully convincing, on the contrary, Why Am I Dancing which returns to a territory already explored more effectively together with Soft Cell in Purple Zone – wanting to be perfidious, if Taylor Swift he doesn’t have one Billie Jean in his repertoire, here too the melody certainly does not travel to those heights – and it is not clear The Schlager Hit Parade the urgency of customs clearance (intellectual like Baustelle? Or with Anglo-Saxon irony?) of music that is easy to listen to, kitsch or dangerously close to bad taste, which has always been the pillar of Eurovision (be careful, we are not just talking about the first ABBA or of the soloist Agnetha Fältskog, but also of what is defined as “Italian schlager” in certain Spotify playlists, between Al Bano and Romina Power and Pupo, between Cutugno and Ricchi e Poveri) between put questionable, rivers of beer, sausages and sauerkraut.
The EP is essential for most, unless you are a long-time fetishist fan Furthermore enclosed in the limited edition which contains four remakes of historical successes that lose the brilliance and nuances that made them classics – and it is a blow to the heart, for this writer, the new Maranza version of Being Boring ready for the beach parties in Lignano Sabbiadoro complete with “hands up”. If the intent was to give it a freshen up, the result obtained is at the opposite end of the spectrum.
Having removed these forgivable weak points, unfortunately always lurking in their recent albums (remember Wedding in Berlin in Hotspots?), Nonetheless it’s a well-written work with at least five really good songs, which is something you should never take for granted when talking about vintage act (Neil Tennant is still preparing to blow out seventy candles on July 10th). The production of James Ford (who we remember with i Depeche Mode in Memento Moribut also with i Blur they Arctic Monkeys) is clean, although sometimes with an excessive smoothness that simplifies and impoverishes some arrangements. It’s just a shame that the era of 12″s, of cassette singles and single CDs is over with dozens of discarded songs which, in the case of the Pet Shop Boys, have often proved to be up to – if not even superior – to their respective sides. TO.
