“We were never being boring,” Pet Shop Boys singer Neil Tennant slyly ruminated on 1990’s release Behaviour. “We were never being bored.”
He was right. Sandwiched somewhere between elegy and eloquence, the pop duo – Tennant out front, Chris Lowe fiddling with the keys and technology in back – have made a mark on pop culture in all of its facets over three decades, sometimes with a slight frown, but always with a pop hook. There have been films, ballets, books, scores and tours, but Pet Shop Boys have always had that somewhat cocked brow of high art threaded just so – along with an incredibly palpable dryness of humor – allowing for an unparalleled career in the pop pantheon.
On April 1, Pet Shop Boys release Super, the second in a rumored trilogy following 2013’s Electric, a top-five smash in their native U.K. Tennant, who helmed pivotal pop magazine Smash Hits (Star Hits in the U.S.) during post-punk’s golden age of new wave as an editor, once coined the phrase “Sir William of Idol,” as a matter of fact. If you’re old enough, you know to whom he was referring.
“Smash Hits was never afraid to puncture the pretensions of pop stars – indeed that was another of its functions,” he wrote in the forward to Smash Hits retrospective in 2007, “but nothing would have been possible without the enthusiastic cooperation of pop stars who wanted their brilliant moments captured in color, preferably on the cover.”
Which brings us to now, an era of pop stars whose pretense is bought and sold on the stock market or supermarket shelves; an era when Pet Shop Boys are officially, and deservedly, elder statesmen held in high esteem. They’re always standing there at the front of a cultural zeitgeist, always bleeding wit and beauty.
“In the inner sanctum, you’re a star. The girls, the guys, they all know who you are,” Tennant sings on Super’s hypnotic teaser track “Inner Sanctum.”
If Electric’s blatant rushes to the dance floor – via tracks with titles like “Vocal” and “Love is a Bourgeois Construct,” no less – were indicators of how 60-year-old British gentlemen process nightlife without looking like grumpy uncles, then Super is the after party. “Happiness,” the first track, is the sound of that small room on that small couch at 4 a.m., poppers ahoy. “It’s a long way to happiness, a long way to go, but I’m gonna get there boy, the only way I know,” Tennant sings before spelling out “H-A-P-P-I-N-E-S-S,” a backward nod to previous Pet Shop Boys spelling records (“Shopping,” “Minimal”). First single “The Pop Kids” follows at an equally ecstatic stride, evoking the early ‘90s house, hands-in-the-air euphoria that would be a forgery of past signature victories had Pet Shop Boys not created the document upon which that signature was signed.
“Oh, I like it here. Oh, I love it,” comes the bridge. “I am never going home.” And then, because it’s Neil Tennant, “I loved you,” as a side of melancholy served with a boiled heart.
In many ways, Super succeeds in areas where Electric distracted. Over-the-shoulder-gazes point more to Introspective (1988) than more recent electronic efforts. And though they may never regain their “Imperial Phase,” which in PSB parlance references the first three records, Super has a bite to it that is unmistakably part of the Pet Shop Boys brand. “Twenty-Something” pops along like something off Very (1993) as if it were at a Vanity 6 recording session; “The Dictator Decides” pushes and pulls and twinkles with appropriate authority (and typical PSB politics/history references; Neil Tennant is a sad politico at heart). The only slowie comes in the form of “Sad Robot World” – “they can manufacture what you want to capture” – which carries its icy futurism to Blade Runner, sci-fi proportions. Then everything goes GeorgioMoroder toward the end. Producer Stuart Price is effectively a bright blue neon sign on “Burn.”
“We’re gonna burn this disco down before the morning comes,” Tennant sings. “It feels so good.”
There’s something uneven about cultural nostalgia, bad suits and bad brokers. It can come off as desperate. Were Pet Shop Boys attempting to be references to themselves more than 30 years ago – back in the Bobby O days – sure, it would work here in its own way. But they aren’t. They’re simply being themselves, brilliantly. And as tried and tested formulas go, you can’t get much better than the Tennant/Lowe model.
“We need some practical dreamers, and maybe a few magicians,” Tennant sings on closing track “Into Thin Air.” Thankfully, we already have them.
