These Boys Light Up The Nightlife

Those Who Find Techno a turnoff are missing out on the dynamic duo's New album of Delightfully Subversive pop. THE Pet Shop Boys has done an incurable job of maturing in the '90s. At the state of the decade, it released its fourth album Behavior - which marked the duo's transition from commercial-pop purveyor to serious. Album-artiste, yielding critically-lauded re-suits the process.

In 'the nine years since Behavior, they have made it a point to put out one new album every three years -Very (1993), Bilingual (1996) and come mid-October, the new Nightlife.
This neat regularity in output is part and parcel of the groups icon of mod-ern-pop that also insists on trenchant one-word album ~ minimalists cover Designs.

To think that it all began with Please in _1986 - a title that came about just so because people can go into the record shop and say -can I have the new Pet Shop Boys album, Please?" (the Boys' own explanation) -surely says a lot about the duo's wit and role as pop's wry commentator. Detractors, who argue that singer Neil Tennant's nasal android voice as well as techno- pop in general are a turnoff, are missing all the fill' in the Pet Shop Boys' delightfully subversive pop.

Take, for instance, the inherent self-effacing irony of this Tennant statement: "We try to make something different (with each new record) but then I sing on it 'and it turns into the Pet Shop Boys and that's that!" More than just delivering intelligent irony-filled pop, the duo is also about the joy of rediscovering pop as a post-rock alternative. That is perhaps why even Axi Rose of Guns N' Roses confessed to being a fan during. The time of Behavior. Being a few steps ahead of the 'pack, the Pet Shop Boys always gets its due respect when trends come - around to acknowledge its contributions every now and then.

When Behavior arrived at the time Of Those music's boom it reminded us that Pet Shop Boys had been upholding dance-pop all along. Now, Just as commercial techno is undergoing a minor revival in dance, Nightlife shows us that the duo has never discarded Euro-techno. With the new album, the duo of Tennant and Chris Lowe is closing the '90s by returning to Behavior's symphonic pop thus taking its stylistic limit. In the Pet Shop Boys' scheme of things, that means symphonic with a vengeance.

Nightlife is truly lusher than anything the duo has done, boasting the orches-tration-score of Craig Armstrong (known for his work with Massive Attack). But since the album comes after the very personal Bilingual, it also shares with Very that reactionary stance to its predecessor's personal leverage. In a nutshell, Nightlife is - like Behavior - introspective and elegiac yet also playbill and celebratory like Very a best-of-both-worlds epitome in one grand sweep. In its press release, the group states: "All the songs take place at night. People's perceptions of life are different at night, people's needs are different, the need for love or sex is greater, people want to dance. (So) Nightlife represents the good and bad sides of Nightclubbing and maybe the good and bad sides of human nature."

Hard-core fans may even venture to deduce that the new album is the nocturnal end-link to the Pet Shop Boys' '90s quadruple: Behavior represents dusk, Very - dawn, and Bilingual day; thus completing a lull day in the decade of the Pet Shop Boys. If the recent single I Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give It Anymore offers any indication of the new album's strength, it is all in the tune's majestic qualities -the urgent rush of a poignant song styled with an overwhelming grandness showing the extent of the Pet Shop Bo '

vision at this point This much I will disclose for now, Nightlife offers transcendent pop of the finest order.

Special thanks You My Lovely Friend Angela Glasgow For sending me this Article

This interview was published in the 24th September 1999 issue of THE STRAITS TIMES.