| Pet
Shop Boys Disco Dogs with New Tricks The PSB are doing again what they've
done for 2 decades:
making music
that moves the body, with heart and wit. Rufus Wainwright finds out how.
With their high, dry wit, the PSB have been the Oscar Wildes of the dance
floor for almost twenty years now. Just as Wilde's witticism only partly
obscured his intense emotionalism, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe's wry humor
and pop sheen never completely distract us from the heart beating beneath
and bpms.
We asked singer-songwriter
Rufus Wainwright, another romantic, to talk to Tennant about the duo's gorgeous
new album, Nightlie (London/Sire).
R: After eight
years off the road, are you coming back with a vengeance with your new show?
N: Totally.
We're doing this big show with a big set design (an angled, brushed-metal
platform by noted London architect Zaha Hadid, designer of the Millennium
Dome in Greenwich, England). In the past we used to do theatrical kinds
of shows; this is more futuristic nad abstract.
R: Tell me
about your outfits for it.
N: We've designed
a new image. Chris and I never liked looking how we were meant to, as did
most people in the music business in the 90s. I think we're old-fashioned
in that respect. We feel more secure if we have a uniform we change into
for public appearances,
to feel larger
than life. R: In your video "I don't know what you want but I can't give
it anymore," you're wearing black tape on your eyes and spinning on records.
N: We're wearing
wigs and we got these big black eyebrows to go with the Japanese kabuki
suits -- they make us look permanently angry. They also make both of us
look a bit the same, which I quite like. We're wearing that on stage nad
we got some new outfits as well.
R: Do you talk
at all in between songs?
N: I am going
to on this tour. I'd like to eventually do a show in a little theatre where
you sit on a stool and talk to the audience. I'm building up the confudence
to do that when I am about seventy-five.
R: I'm going
your way and you are going mine
N: You are
going towards dance music?
R: Not right
away.
I tried it
once-- I had someone remix a song adn it was completely horrid. But that's
b/c he used a lot of backup singers. I always felt a little disconnected
from dance music in general.
N: I find sometimes
that I get disconnected from dance msuic becasue it's increasingly got very
little to do with songs. I am a song man, so we try to do songs with dance
rhythms.
R: When I was
a tennager, it was always interesting to hear the Pet Shop Boys at the dance
club becasue I would be drunk and sad and feeling out of it, and then your
song would come on and it would be a dreamy moment where I could be romantic
for 2 seconds.
N: (laughs)
we are very romantic club music. One of the points of what we have done
is appeal to the idea that you want to dance slow, and suddenly you can.
It's that feeling of (the Boys' 1987 hit with Dusty Springfield) "What have
I done to deserve this?"
R: I love the
song " You only ever say you love me when you're durnk" on the new record.
It's really beautiful.
N: It's one
of my favorites. In fact, it's going to be the next singl.
R: Is that
sentiment in the title autobiographical?
N: Yeah. When
you are a songwriter there is always this cold part of your brain that says
in the middle of any situation, Hmm, that's a good idea for a song.
R: I also liked
that song b/c I have been on the other side, telling people I love them
while I'm drunk, and you do feel like such a heel afterwards.
N: Our idea
of the song is: Is it true or not? Are you saying you love me when you are
drunk b/c you really love me, but you are normally too inhibited, or are
you saying it b/c you are durnk and you are just full of shit?
R: That's what
we've all been trying to figure out all our lives.
N: It also
sounds kind of funny. The title to me really sounds like a country song,
so we got a pedalsteel guitar.
R: You don't
use a lot of samples or recognizable sounds.
N: On this
album the fundamental idea was to mix electronic music with strings, so
we worked on it with Craig Armstrong. who's a film composer. He did the
music for Romeo and Juliet (1996).
R: So that's
a real orchestra?
N: Yeah, it's
a real big orchestra. I've always loved having strings nad we wanted to
use them not in a big way, but in a very subtle way, to make the harmonies
richer.
R: One of my
major problems with dance music is the repetition of melodies. And that's
not so much from an artist's point of view, but more from a listener's.
I've noticed that you and Chris really put a lot of worked into your melodies.
N: I think
that meldoy, almost always, is the most important part of a song. We like
simple melodies that will complicate chord changes. So you've got the rich
harmony, then you get a little hokey melody on top of it.
R: Did you
ever writh a msucial?
N: We've just
written one! It's going to be produced next year. There are a couple of
songs on the album from it, including "In Denial," which is a duet between
us and Kylie Minogue. We tried to do a musical that's small. It's got a
cast of about 12 and it's about contemporary life.
R: Is there
any genre of music you want to branch out into?
N: We're not
one of those bands that suddenly makes a chilling electronic album in Berlin
and then makes a durm 'n' bass album. We like to develop our sound gradually.
Right now, Chris nad I would like to make a record with Dr. Dre. We've actually
tried to contact him becasue it'd be great to make a birdge between that
sort of music and our kind of music, with my little white voice.
R: I love your
little white voice. I have a huge voice and often I want it to be quieter.
N: Your spoken
voice sounds like your singing voice.
R: It does?
N: Yeah. I
can recognize your spoken voice from your album.
R: Thank you
very much. You sound completely different.
N: I sound
like a choir boy, really. And as I get older my voice is getting higher.
Special thanks
to Xeno from transcribing this. |
