PET SHOP BOYS

Line-up: Neil Tennant, Chris Lowe. Tennant takes care of the lead vocals while Lowe pipes in on the occasional song; both are responsible for all the instruments, synths, keyboards, programming, etc.

Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe met by chance in 1981 while browsing for synthesizers, and a quick conversation on a shared interest turned into a lifelong friendship as well as one of the most influential careers in all of music. While it took nearly half a decade for them to start as recording artists in earnest, the duo (who named themselves after the nickname they had given to their friends who worked at a pet shop) quickly established themselves as one of the definitive names in the increasingly prevalent synth pop field and took the world by storm. Their longevity has earned them the title of Grandfathers of Synth Pop, their back catalogue of hits contain a number of era-defining classics, and the artists who have claimed to have taken inspiration from them transcend genres; their influence even exceeds music itself, as Tennant once described their do-no-wrong years of seemingly infinite success as their "imperial phase", a phrase which is now part of standard music journalist (which Tennant himself was as well before making music instead of writing about it became his full-time job) lexicon. They are, by and far, one of the most important acts to feature in my site.

So how come all that ever seems to get discussed about them is their first couple of albums from the 1980s?

This particular bugbear of mine admittedly isn't as much of an issue in Europe, where the duo continued to have huge hits and significant presence well beyond their first decade. It still happens though: they're synonymous solely with "West End Girls" and "It's a Sin", you'll be shocked to find anything but Actually ever appear in any ranking lists, and many who adore those early works and are aware there's more to them have still barely scratched the surface beyond the first couple of albums. This isn't meant to be a creed against early Pet Shop Boys - you'll find my opinions on them below but (spoilers) they're pretty positive and it's impossible to deny their stature and influence all things considered. But in my opinion the part where Pet Shop Boys go from a great act to an legendary one, well that lies further down their career as they became more adventurous and experimental.

One of the most exciting facets of Pet Shop Boys is just how devoted they are to the overall presentation around their music. Both Tennant and Lowe have always been theatrical individuals with larger-than-life visions and a desire to throw themselves fully into their whims where possible. After the learning curve of the first couple of records and especially the increase in both clout and recording budget that their success brought with them, the duo began to push themselves further artistically in more than just their music. These days we talk about artist and album "eras" like it's a given thing, with so many pop artists in particular immersing themselves in particular aesthetics for their album cycles and banking on it to hype up their releases; and that's also something that Pet Shop Boys arguably influenced. From the early 1990s onwards each Pet Shop Boys album became a miniature universe into itself, with emphasis on particular design and sound to guide each album, interlinking aesthetics between the various covers (albums and singles) and music videos, and even signature looks for the duo themselves for the era. This has a clear musical impact: it allows each album to let loose in its own way and they all become their highly distinct entities, revealing different sides of the duo's songwriting and inspirations. Many of the reasons why I rate Pet Shop Boys so highly is because of the music released after their "imperial phase" of late 1980s, because of how wildly varied and creative it got.

But this dedication to the wider picture also makes each era so damn fun to dip into, where each different release is like a trip to a different place. I started my PSB journey with PopArt and then picked my way through their back catalogue in line of what resonated the most with me across the compilation: each new album was always a surprise that you couldn't really prepare yourself into by just sampling some of its songs. This whole affair was admittedly aided by two additional products: one being the PopArt DVD which featured all of their (mostly excellent) music videos to date and which pushed through the visual side of each album, but I also had the benefit of then-recent start of the Further Listening reissue series and their extensive liner notes which taught me all about the context and intentions behind each album and song. You couldn't ask for a better crash course because it made it clear just how deep the rabbit hole went with each album, and everything I learned about the surroundings of each record just made me appreciate them more. In hindsight, maybe this is where my love for artistic context truly begins?

Pet Shop Boys didn't take too long to become a big favourite of mine. Their highly melodic and immediately identifiable sense of songwriting ensured that each song almost immediately latched onto me, and Tennant's soft voice was a particularly charismatic and charming narrator across those lush soundscapes; his lyrics, too, frequently reveal his past as a writer by their use of clever turns of phrase and iconic lines, not to mention the myriad of sources he took inspiration from is exciting in itself. There's also a plethora of incredible material outside the main albums themselves, not only in the form of their vast quantities of oft-excellent b-sides which firmly places in them in the list of my favourite b-sides acts, but the A-sides themselves have often been tweaked as well, with some of the single remixes practically passing as new songs. It's a deep, wide world that feels like an endless treasure trove when you first begin digging into it. Now that I'm a seasoned veteran, it makes up for one of the richest back catalogues in my shelf.

A quick word on the aforementioned Further Listening reissues, which first began in 2001 with the first six albums and which then continued in 2017 with the next five. For me, they are the gold standard when it comes to standard reissues. Each of the packages comes with the original album faithfully remastered, as well as a disc (or two) with all the b-sides, additional studio tracks and various alternative takes and versions which have all been chosen for being interesting in one way or another, rather than to simply fill a disc. Often the non-album cuts are also presented in slightly different versions to the original releases, so that the separate b-side compilations still remain relevant in their own right. Besides the musical goods, the packaging is faithful to the original designs but with a clear design tweak to indicate they're a uniform part of the same reissue series (housed in slipcases, covering both the jewel case and the separate booklet), and they all come with thick booklets explaining the context and recording process of the album, both Tennant and Lowe's extensive commentary on every single song (includes the bonus material), the lyrics and vast amounts of photoshoot material and additional artwork to establish the visual vibe of the era. They're wonderful, nearly all-comprehensive packages. The reason I mention them separately here is that for the first six albums, that's the only version I own - and for the albums afterwards, I've been collecting the series at a steady pace. This makes the "Physically" section of each review very repetitive, and so rather copy/paste the same sentences over and over again I'll just refer to this one. I've also utilised the covers for the original albums for each of the review entries below, even though technically the copies I own look different - that just looks nicer visually.

Main chronology:

• 1986: Please
• 1987: Actually
• 1988: Introspective
• 1990: Behaviour
• 1993: Very
• 1995: Alternative
• 1996: Bilingual
• 1999: Nightlife
• 2002: Release
• 2006: Fundamental
• 2006: Concrete
• 2009: Yes
• 2012: Format
• 2012: Elysium
• 2013: Electric
• 2016: Super
• 2020: Hotspot
• 2024: Nonetheless

Other releases:

• 1993: Relentless
• 2003: Disco 3
• 2003: PopArt: The Hits

(Discography gaps: Disco 1/2/4, couple of the live albums, the Tennant/Lowe soundtracks.)

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PLEASE

1) Two Divided by Zero; 2) West End Girls; 3) Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money); 4) Love Comes Quickly; 5) Suburbia; 6) Opportunities (Reprise); 7) Tonight Is Forever; 8) Violence; 9) I Want a Lover; 10) Later Tonight; 11) Why Don't We Live Together?
CD2: Further Listening 1984-1986: A Man Could Get Arrested (12" Version); 2) Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money) (Full-Length Original 7" Version); 3) In the Night; 4) Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money) (Original 12" Mix); 5) Why Don't We Live Together? (Original New York Mix); 6) West End Girls (Dance Mix); 7) A Man Could Get Arrested (7" Version); 8) Love Comes Quickly (Dance Mix); 9) That's My Impression (Disco Mix); 10) Was That What It Was?; 11) Suburbia (The Full Horror); 12) Jack the Lad; 13) Paninaro (Italian Mix)

A tale of two halves: one already mastered, another still learning.

Please took a while to pull together. Between the start of Tennant and Lowe's collaboration and when they started to think about putting together their debut, they had already written an impressive back catalogue full of songs they were confident in - so many in fact that they started to intentionally hold back some of them and there's a good number of now-established classics from the later albums that trace their way to these early days. The Boys' original plan was to record the album with Bobby Orlando, a dance music producer whose works the duo had been massively inspired by, and they spent a lot of time in Orlando's studio putting together an album's worth of songs. But something just didn't sit right and the sessions were eventually restarted back in the UK with Stephen Hague sitting in the producer's seat. The point here is that the material the duo had with them got assessed and reassessed a number of times across the whole journey, and they had a veritable armoury of incredible songs waiting to be released ("It's a Sin" was originally recorded for Please!). This should be the recipe for one of music history's all-time great debut albums, especially knowing the duo's legacy - which is why it's incredible just how lopsided Please is.

It's honestly impossible to overstate just how fantastic the first half of Please is - side one is more or less one of the most iconic singles runs of the 1980s. "West End Girls" remains immediately arresting and chillingly magical no matter how many times you hear it, Tennant's dry "brit-rap" cadence, the backbone of a bass groove and the ever-more-epic choir synth pads making it one of the boldest classics of the decade; "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)" bursts through with both confidence and cheek, full of sly charm but with serious musical chops and many of the album's strongest hooks; the understatedly gorgeous dance ballad "Love Comes Quickly" has in time become possibly even better than the earlier two singles, shuffling onwards with a knife-cuttingly thick mood that's equal parts bittersweet and warmly romantic. The fourth single "Suburbia" isn't quite there in the form it appears on this album: they finished writing the song at the last minute of the sessions but on account that it was was too promising to leave out, the duo effectively just cleaned up their original demo. The fully re-recorded single version is fully on equal footing to the three other singles, but even this obviously less polished version (the production is miles away from the rest of the album) still contains the heart of a grand anthem and you can completely understand why they wanted to include it on the record. The only non-single of the first half, the opener "Two Divided by Zero", could just as easily have been an equally sized hit as the rest: the snappy digital voice sample hook is an immediate catch and the song rolls in with the boldness of an artist who's completely assured of their own skill and talent, and then goes on to prove how right they are in form of a veritable pop giant. Sometimes it feels downright mad just how timelessly great all these songs are and how they all come in one after another, like a merciless barrage of 80s synth pop at its best.

The second half, in the meantime, is basically what you would expect from a brand new act still learning their tricks. This isn't really a dismissal - it's simply that the gap between what's before and after "Opportunities (Reprise)" (a short 30-second bridge of an earlier version of the song now repurposed as an interlude) is bewildering in how different it is in composition, production and just in plain confidence. They are mostly good songs but come across still wet behind their ears, for a variety of reasons too. "Tonight Is Forever" sounds like an attempt to intentionally write something that could match what appears on the first half but it comes across a little too forced to naturally have the same impact; meanwhile "I Want a Lover" tries too hard to be a "cinematic" atmospheric experience and its myriad of overbearing sound effects only hammers in how undercooked the rest of the song is, and how awkward its attempt at uncharacteristic horniness sounds from Tennant's mouth. The sophisticated slow jam "Violence" and the sparse piano ballad "Later Tonight" both unveil a different side of Pet Shop Boys to the rest of Please and serve an important role in that regard, but have the impression of a first draft or a demo of something in the vein of the tropes they represent (they'd in fact revisit "Violence" nearly a decade later and, indeed, improved it with experience). "Why Don't We Live Together?" closes the album off admirably and with exuberance (Neil's falsetto yelps in particular brighten up the day whenever they appear) and briefly returns to the overall tone the album started with - so much so that it's now strangely abrupt after the otherwise more scattershot set of songs right before it.

It is, quite literally, a tale of two halves. One which displays the triumphant entrance of a musical act that started off with a bang and who would obviously go on to have an impressive career afterwards; and another which reveals that the duo were still in the process of learning both about writing songs together as well as about the recording process to bring them to life so others could hear them. It's such a whiplash that it must be a record of some sorts - a curveball which never ceases to surprise no matter how aware you are of it. It leaves Please in that slighly frustrating "good, but..." territory, where its excellent parts are obvious and practically pull you to listen to it more, but the imperfections make it enough of a bumpy ride that it's never quite as satisfying as you'd think or want it to be. You could perhaps consider it a proof of the raw talent that Tennant and Lowe's collaboration could result in, but one that's still caught in the relative inexperience of the two as a musical act beyond their practice space. Nonetheless, it's impressive in its own right that a debut album which is so easy to find these slight flaws from still contains material which other artists would kill for to feature as part of their opening statement.

The Further Listening 1984-1986 bonus set is arguably the least of the whole series. Like mentioned, the duo were reserving many of their best outtakes for the later albums, so the additional studio tracks and b-sides are a little all over the place and mostly lacking in real keepers (Tennant describes "Was That What It Was?" in the booklet as a "very minor work" which is politely scathing). Similarly either due to lack of rights or lack of interest, the disc is largely absent of many of the leaked early demos or Bobby O session takes, and the various extended mixes aren't honestly that exciting. For anyone wanting a peek at any true archeological treasures, there's going to be some disappointment. But all in all, amidst this slightly repetitive set of familiar songs, there are some real highlights too. The original pre-album single version of "Opportunities" is good to have around (a little scruffier but also quite charming), and the re-recorded single version of "Suburbia" (here in its extended "full horror" mix) is essential. Of the non-album tracks, the original version of "A Man Could Get Arrested" which opens the bonus set is atypically aggressive and muscular for Pet Shop Boys and really leaves an impression, emerging as one of the best songs in this set; the re-recorded version a few songs later is a lesser take, but interesting on the account that it's largely played with live instruments which definitely gives its own vibe to this era of the Boys. The fan favourite and all-around excellent "Paninaro" (once again presented as an extended version) closes the disc with as much of a banger as it opened: it's the first appearance of Chris Lowe's lead vocals, his dry listing of fashion brands and destinations on top of a hypnotic high-energy dance track setting the stage for great many "Chris tracks" to come.

Physically: Part of the Further Listening set, so refer to the end of the intro segment.

[Reviewed: 11/10/2024]

ACTUALLY

1) One More Chance; 2) What Have I Done to Deserve This?; 3) Shopping; 4) Rent; 5) Hit Music; 6) It Couldn't Happen Here; 7) It's a Sin; 8) I Want to Wake Up; 9) Heart; 10) King's Cross
CD2: Further Listening 1987-1988: 1) I Want to Wake Up (Breakdown Mix); 2) Heart (Shep Pettibone Version); 3) You Know Where You Went Wrong; 4) One More Chance (7" Mix); 5) It's a Sin (Disco Mix); 6) What Have I Done to Deserve This? (Extended Mix); 7) Heart (Disco Mix); 8) A New Life; 9) Always on My Mind (Demo Version); 10) Rent (7" Mix); 11) I Want a Dog; 12) Always on My Mind (Extended Dance Mix); 13) Do I Have To?; 14) Always on My Mind (Dub Mix)

Bigger, bolder, more bombastic - the imperial phase sound is here.

The writing and recording process for Actually began very soon after Please had come out: some songs had already been held over from the debut in anticipation of the next album, but the lack of touring behind Please meant that the duo could spend any downtime between the promotional cycle working on new material. The primary goal was to make something bigger and more ambitious now that they had gotten rid of their music industry sea legs; the only dilemma was, with who? The Boys had a number of prospective producers in mind to help steer the sessions, and ultimately they chose all of them. Rather than stick to one producer the duo worked with several names, many who had been direct inspirations or who they had worked with before and after Please - Stephen Hague returns from the debut but they also went to work with Shep Pettibone, Julian Mehndelson and several other names, putting the album together little by little in piecemeal sessions and exchanging ideas with all the different personalities.

You could very well make the claim that the record that followed as a result is the definitive synth pop album of the 1980s: one that, even if not the best of its kind according to any one person's individual tastes, certainly exemplifies the ideals and aesthetics of this particular period and this style. You have the particularly 80s sense of bombast and drama where the music is taken to such heights that it's equal parts camp and anthemic, but with a sense of earnesty that you never doubt the artistry involved. Yet it's also, and above all, pop: something to dance to and, if you give it a chance, to lose yourself in joy into even if there are plenty of shadows under the light of its disco-ready songs. It's that uneasy tension underneath the hit music that is the final part of what makes Actually so pivotally 1980s. The then-very-much-alive spectres of AIDS, Thatcherism, growing corporate consumerism and the devastating aftermath of all three linger underneath the songs, often either directly addressed in the songs or informing their creation ("Hit Music" for example is ostensibly about the change in the nightclubbing scene as AIDS broke through, but Tennant removed the lines that spelled out the theme when he revised the lyrics before recording). Tennant describes the album in the Further Listening liner notes of being full of the kind of paranoia that was such a prevalent mood in the mid-late 1980s and that's where much of the emotional charge of the album comes from, even if there's a dancefloor-ready bassline on top of it.

Within the context of Pet Shop Boys themselves, Actually projects an altogether more refined vision of what the duo sought out to do early on. "Refinement" is really the key word here: the style and sound have largely remained the same from Please courtesy of the short time frame, but there's an ongoing desire to stretch the wings and expand the borders around what had come before. The arrangements have become more adventurous and the song structures aren't as neatly contained in simple series of verses and choruses which lends to longer songs. Tennant is also exploring his own range both in his lyrics and how he sings them, his voice showing up here with so much more colour and nuance than on the debut. The effect of having multiple different producers and co-producers in the studio also means that sonically the album moves around different directions with wild abandon: the classically PSB-like "One More Chance" (with a long build-up that immediately signals there's been a chance from the more immediate songs on Please) and "Hit Music" continue from where the duo had left off, but gentle curveballs like the kraut-electronica of "Shopping" and the more intricately atmospheric "I Want to Wake Up" take steps towards new frontiers. With "King's Cross" and "It Couldn't Happen Here" the duo unveil their first true fleshed-out ballads, drenched in wistfulness and slowly exploding in grandeur as they take off. You could have, to some degree, dismissed Please as the work of average synthpoppers who lucked out with a couple of songs: Actually showcases the actual range and personality of Pet Shop Boys much better.

That said, once more the singles loom over the rest of the album so headily that they almost (almost) overshadow the rest. Part of that is absolutely just exposure: I got into PSB through their singles before any of the albums, so I was deeply familiar with a very specific chunk of this album before I heard the rest of it and that's undoubtedly coloured some of my experience. But then, that same approach hasn't affected how I hear many of their other albums, and the truth is that the singles run of Actually isn't so dominating just because they were the singles, but because the duo chose most of the record's most impactful musical statements as the singles. "What I Have Done to Deserve This?" is a suavely lush pop gem which marks such a difference in its deftness compared to the relative rigidity of the debutthat it's difficult to comprehend it's been less than a year from Please: as a duet with Dusty Springfield it's bound to attract attention by default as well (and her voice does mesh delightfully with Neil's as they trade lines and sing harmonies), but the reason it continues to be one the duo's greatest songs is because it represents an almost ideally perfect kind of pop bliss in how deliriously melodic and joyously irresistable it is. "Rent" is delicate and tender, its production sounding so fragile it comes across hushed, but hidden inside that shyness are one of Tennant's best vocals on the album and the heart of a big glitzy anthem, which the withdrawn nature of the song makes all the more alluring. "Heart" (which I actually prefer in its somewhat more straightforward album mix over the flashier single version) is just a straight-up honest big disco pop song about nothing deeper than love and feelings, which as the album's penultimate song feels almost more radical by this point than any of the more intricate material ahead of it; that it's such a huge, sweeping juggernaut of a hook delivery machine also helps with that, and the fake-out ending is one of my favourite moments across the record. And, well, "It's a Sin" is "It's a Sin" - catholic guilt dressed up in the most 80s-of-the-80s over-the-top production, full of pomp and circus while also delivering the goods with its gargantuan chorus and Tennant's charged delivery. It's great, obviously, but if there's one Pet Shop Boys back catalogue staple I've lost touch a little bit over the years it's this, though through not fault of its own (I just find it a little overplayed is all); but as a miniature piece of theatrical drama in form of a pop song there aren't many others that pull it off as well as "It's a Sin" (which likely inspired all those others to begin with).

This time however, the deep cuts of Actually put up a bit more of a fight with its popular favourites than they did on Please. The two spotlight ballads are the most revelatory from a chronological perspective as the Boys show they can also conjure these more evocative, emotional pieces, paving the way for many career highlights over the next several decades. The haunting atmospherics of the minimalistic "It Couldn't Happen Here", an elegy for naïvety and hindsight in the wake of AIDS' arrival, are particularly bittersweet and pained and the song's spacious and skeletal arrangement make it affectively haunting, and "King's Cross" finishes the album with a boldly rising torchlight anthem that keeps its cool and emotional distance as the arrangement swells up around it, rolling the credits with a sense of drama familiar from the earlier album cuts but now sounding daunting rather than triumphant. "I Want to Wake Up" is a big personal favourite with its dream-like production that's unlike anything else on the album, complemented by the ethereal synth riffs and New Order "guitars", and "One More Chance" is an arrestingly powerful statement of intent in it's opener position as it introduces the album's epic nature by way of a long-form, bit-by-bit build-up that teases your anticipation until it finally launches and it sounds ecstatic. The key aspect of Actually that in particular makes it a step up from its predecessor is its consistency across the board: even though not everything is quite up to scratch with the rest ("Shopping" isn't as clever as it thinks it is though its jerky rhythm is catchy, the simple swagger of "Hit Music" would have been more comfortable on Please than being outgunned in here), the gaps between the highlights and the rest isn't quite as egregious as it was on the debut.

If you want to mark off some points from Actually, then it's due to how it doesn't quite hang together as an album. After "One More Chance" the album may as well have been ordered randomly and each transition to the next feels just as disjointed as the last, beyond the placement of "King's Cross" as the grand finale (apparently they initially considered it to open the album which would have been mad). The disjointed stop-and-start flow has a tangible effect to the overall impression it leaves by causing the album feel smaller than the sum of its parts: a record with songs these show-offish should feel more like a big deal, but you're rather left feeling like you've accidentally put your 80s PSB library on shuffle mode again. The myriad of producers and their individual imprints to the sound of the songs is the likely reason for this (again), but the silver lining is that I don't think those individual parts of Actually would have been realised as triumphantly as they have without pairing the songs with whomever made the most sense to bring the particular vision to life; some of the bonus material, which we'll get to in a moment, supports this as well. But though they leave an imprint on the album, they still feel like minor quibbles in the face of Actually representing a significant step up for the Pet Shop Boys creatively and otherwise. The record effectively codifies everything that we would come to love and admire about their music, and in the real world it lead the duo to the heights of their self-coined do-no-wrong imperial phase. Actually is a great album that sets the base expectations for what you ought to find in a Pet Shop Boys album: from hereon forwards, the duo could look to start experimenting with this baseline in mind as they started to expand their horizons.

Moving onto the Further Listening 1987-1988 bonus disc, there's effectively two sides to the bonus material. One is subtly unveiling the development process of the album through the various alternative versions and extended mixes, most of which are built upon initial versions of the songs before the duo revisited the tracks with another producer. There's a bunch of historically interesting material there like the Hague-produced original 7" version of "One More Chance" (before the duo reworked the song into an extended mix with Mendehlsson and liked it so much they turned it into the album version), the Breakdown mix of "I Want to Wake Up" which drops the drums for half the track and lets the atmosphere sink in and the various versions of "Heart" from the demo to the single mix (here in its extended form); they're all uniformly less good than what made it to the album, but it's neat to track down the extent of the tinkering that the songs went through in such a short amount of time and contemplate on how these songs could have sounded if certain whim decisions hadn't taken place. The other aspect are the b-sides, most of which were recorded specifically for the singles and which are all varying degrees of excellent. "You Know Where You Went Wrong" was created purposefully in the template of "West End Girls" and shows a bit more of that dry sass over a solid groove, "A New Life" continues in the vein of "Rent" and "I Want to Wake Up" with its light-weight grace and its origin as a commission songwriting piece allows Tennant and Lowe to try out something different, the original version of "I Want a Dog" (pre-Introspective) is cheeky with its bark-bark snare drums and Lowe's Kraftwerkian listing of dog breeds, and "Do I Have To?" is another beautiful and gentle ballad. There's also variations on the non-album single "Always on My Mind", an Elvis cover which the Boys basically took ownership of with their fantastic rendition that highlights the perceived callousness of the narrator: the demo is the original performance version of the song before the duo recorded it (with the thought of turning it into a b-side, but y'know...), the extended mix hides the familiar single version within itself and the "dub mix" is really just a short and stripped-down outro which underlines the beauty of the melody together with Tennant's delivery. An altogether interesting set of archival material for the biggest fans, even if not really that solid as a full listening experience.

Physically: Part of the Further Listening set, so refer to the end of the intro segment.

[Reviewed: 19/10/2024]

INTROSPECTIVE

1) Left to My Own Devices; 2) I Want a Dog; 3) Domino Dancing; 4) I'm Not Scared; 5) Always on My Mind/In My House; 6) It's Alright
CD2: Further Listening 1987-1988: 1) I Get Excited (You Get Excited Too); 2) Don Juan (Demo Version); 3) Domino Dancing (Demo Version); 4) Domino Dancing (Alternative Version); 5) The Sound of the Atom Splitting; 6) What Keeps Mankind Alive?; 7) Don Juan (Disco Mix); 8) Losing My Mind (Disco Mix); 9) Nothing Has Been Proved (Demo for Dusty); 10) So Sorry, I Said (Demo for Liza); 11) Left to My Own Devices (7" Mix); 12) It's Alright (10" Version); 13) One of the Crowd; 14) It's Alright (7" Version); 15) Your Funny Uncle

Repurposed back catalogue cuts and extended dance cuts form a great leap forward.

Actually was such an enormous success that it got into Pet Shop Boys' heads, in that ultimately benign but undeniably self-absorbed way where the artist on the top of the world believes the gates are open for any nugget of inspiration they get in their heads. Introspective was the first Pet Shop Boys album which started with a defined concept in mind: as opposed to the contemporary standard practice for pop acts to feature elaborate extended remixes as the b-sides to their more approachable album tracks, the Boys decided to reverse the process. What if instead it was the album which featured the long, stretched-out arrangements and the songs would be written from the start with that in mind, and the singles would be formed from chopping up and re-recording those songs into an easily presentable package? In the modern day this basically feels like the standard, but in the late 1980s this was a wild and potentially audience-alienating idea, as the general public would expect to hear the familiar songs from the radio when they bought the album - but the Boys had the clout and the studio budget to do absolutely anything they wanted to. Introspective was a moment of glorious hubris for the duo, but also a genuine risk - and in fact back in the day it ended up biting them back through lower sales and a more mixed reception (this was basically the final nail in the coffin for the Boys' days of success in the US, leaving them as 80s relics in transatlantic minds forever).

The shock value of the album's concept has undeniably dulled with age, but Introspective is still a weird album when you break it down to its pieces. It's a full-on dance album with only six songs and only two of them, "Left to My Own Devices" and "Domino Dancing", are genuine brand new Pet Shop Boys compositions. "I Want a Dog" was first released as a b-side a year earlier and the version here was remixed by Frankie Knuckles for the album after Tennant and Lowe thought it had the potential to go somewhere further; "I'm Not Scared" meanwhile was written and produced by the Boys for Eighth Wonder, who had scored a UK top ten hit with it similarly in 1987. The Elvis cover "Always on My Mind" had been an unplanned non-album single in the middle of the Actually campaign and had become another enormous hit for the duo, though the version here likely shocked (and disappointed) everyone who were expecting a 1:1 version of the smash. "It's Alright" meanwhile is a brand new recording but it's also another cover, and the 1987 original by Sterling Void was still fresh in every club goer's minds when Pet Shop Boys released their take on it. Despite being their third fully-fledged studio album, Introspective is a hodgepodge of already recorded songs that the two felt warranted a quick revisit, together with cobbled-together new ideas and sounds where the duo thought to expand their repertoire. To go with the album's central idea, they're not small songs either: the shortest ("I Want a Dog") is a little over six minutes long while the rest hover comfortably around the 8-9 minute thresholds, which stands out not just against the first two albums but also nearly everything the Boys have recorded since.

Bringing back the previously recorded material is justified, given what has been done with them here. "I Want a Dog" now has its potential fully realised: the original was a lot of fun but it was closer to a novelty experiment than a fully-fledged song-song (with those wonderful bark snares and all), however the melodies in it were really strong and arguably deserved better. So, the more humorous parts have been tossed out in Frankie Knuckles' rework and the arrangement has been beefed up to build up those melodies even further while sticking them into a suaver, more muscular arrangement that's part military march and part carnival parade. The changes have the added effect of highlighting the quiet melancholy of the lyrics even though none of Tennant's dry wit has been removed from them (RIP to the section where Lowe listed out dog breeds, though) - the song feels like an unassuming duckling got turned into a bold swan and it's such an exciting powerhouse track now despite its low-key premise (literally born out of a friend stating he wants a dog, but only a small one so it can fit in his tiny flat - a very 2024 statement there). "I'm Not Scared" finds the Boys practically reclaiming their song back from Eighth Wonder, again blessing it with a sense of heightened drama (which runs throughout Introspective) which boosts the existing strengths of the confidently strutting soon-to-be-break-up manifesto. The Eighth Wonder version sounded like a PSB song already for obvious reasons but is perhaps a bit too timid for what the attitude of the lyrics convey, and PSB's own version seemingly seeks to fix that while also turning the song into an even more of a juggernaut pop exercise. The "Always on My Mind" rework (now with a dad-jokey "In My House" subtitle) is controversial given how it barely resembles the incredibly famous single version for most of its duration while still teasing it throughout its long build-ups and breakdowns, but it all proves to be worth the edging. When the familiar tune finally pops out at the 5:30 mark after all those hints and false stats (and with that lush new synth riff as well playing the key melody), the pay-off is simply glorious. There's no doubt that single version is the definitive version of the song, but this re-interpretation presented here is enticingly wild and is perhaps the truest representation of Introspective's mission statement.

The three completely new songs have their foot in the duo's future as they serve to stretch the Boys' musical language, previewing the musical progression towards more elaborate ideas and nuanced writing that would shortly take over their music. "Left to My Own Devices", in fact, is one of Pet Shop Boys' most defining songs - grand orchestral flourishes meet a steadily ticking yet still ebbing and flowing dance beat, forming into a half-biographical statement of intent spread across multiple verses which breezes through its eight and a half minutes. It's introspective but also completely danceable; ultimately triumphant in its declaration of choice in its chorus but it wouldn't have the effect it does if it wasn't for the contemplative verses, and that particular harmony would be synonymous with their music from now on in. It's all so Pet Shop Boys that I'd highlight as one of the most accurate examples of what they are all about, "Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat" and all. "Domino Dancing" is a Western pop song with a distinct Latin flair in its step, the horn sections and the classical guitar picking throughout in particular, which normally rings warning bells in my head (you can blame that on growing up during the turn-of-millennium Latino pop trend). However, it's an effortlessly lush and delightful song built around a simple yet completely undeniable chorus, easily the most "classic" PSB song of the set but which still reflects their desire to embrace new sounds and experiment with new collaborators. "It's Alright" closes the album as its most outwardly club-friendly moment, where the duo embrace the original's house roots without changing much of it at all and so it gets to ride its nine+ minutes on top of house pianos, four-to-the-floor beats and choir vocals that carry the song more than Tennant does. The song would later be massively reshaped into a more recognisably PSB-like form when it was released as a single to close the era, but this album version again brings the project closer to the original premise of the record. There's a real sense of joy in the track, the gentle worry of the lyrics ultimately turned around with a dash of hope and so the album finishes with a jubilant dance party that triumphantly seems to go on forever.

Perhaps the most applaudable thing about Introspective then is how well these six largely disparate songs hang together so well. Thanks to the short yet hefty tracklist there's a great weight placed one each song to carry their portion of the album, but they bear the load well with not a single song being obviously lesser than the others; likewise none of them feel like they've been artificially lengthened to fit the brief and the runtimes feel perfectly justified as the songs add new sections and elements. Only the more obviously repetitive "It's Alright" is slightly debatable in that respect and your mileage may vary, but I personally love how its rush of good vibes seems to just go on and on. Despite effectively being a pick-and-mix of disparate ideas from all around the past year, the album strongly stands as a cohesive piece of work with a clear end goal in mind. It's honestly impressive how great Introspective is in all its aspects and while it may not display their songwriting at its most nuanced or emotionally resonant, it's one of PSB's most imminently backbone-bouncing, foot-tapping set of honest straight-up bangers. Even though from the outset it seems like a bullheaded experiment that could easily go awry, it's immediately engaging; I remember having a little bit of eyebrow-raising doubt about its quality before I first heard it and all that was washed away completely before the album was even halfway through. Despite its towering sprawl, it's sharp and snappy in its execution.

When viewing the whole career all together, Introspective stands as one of Pet Shop Boys' most fascinating and off-kilter records. The closest they ever got to repeating its vibe was Relentless five years later and even that was a decidedly more lowkey piece of work as opposed to the lavishly produced grandeur of Introspective (PSB again worked with a number of different producers for the album but the maximalist tendencies of Trevor Horn have the widest reach, even on the songs he's not directly involved with). The sprawling soundscapes of these six songs are full of theatrical grandeur, enormous melodies pushed through with the fearless energy and ambition of artists who were believing in their own hype and wanted to go beyond what's expected. It results in such an exciting tour de force rollercoaster of an album packed with classic moments; and though it was a lesser commercial success compared to the first two albums (I mean there had to be a drop at some point), the real triumph was the creative one. From here forward the Boys would excitedly start jumping into albums with particular concepts or moods in mind, or even try out more off-the-road side projects, and I think we can attribute much of that enthusiasm to Introspective embracing one such idea so strongly while coming out so successfully.

The Further Listening 1988-1989 version is the first of these bonus discs that could be called honestly a bit exciting. For one, it's bookended by two stand-out b-sides: the propulsive and hit-esque "I Get Excited (You Get Excited Too)" was earmarked for the album early on but ended up having to be used as the bonus track to accompany the belated "Heart" single, and so the album was robbed off one of its most storming hooks (though perhaps in hindsight the writing is a bit closer to Actually and so would may be have been out of place). The closer is the sentimental piano piece "Your Funny Uncle" which describes a real funeral of Neil's friend that had recently taken place, with all the heartfelt love and memory for the one who was lost. The other b-sides include a few of their quirkiest (the atonal jam "The Sound of the Atom Splitting", the snarky showtune cover "What Keeps Mankind Alive?" and the Lowe dance-track "One of the Crowd" with its infamous lines about fishing with his rod) and a couple of them are presented as their extended "disco" versions so as to still make Alternative worth its money. "Nothing Has Been Proved" and "So Sorry, I Said" were originally written for Dusty Springfield and Liza Minnelli respectively, and the previously unreleased PSB's own versions are not only fairly identical to the final versions musically (the "demo" nominer only really refers to Neil taking the lead vocal) but they also slot in comfortably as part of their wider ouevre for this period. "Nothing Has Been Proved" in particular is a lush synth ballad that isn't too far away from e.g. "It Couldn't Happen Here" and the extremely specific lyrics work much better when they're sung by a history and politics buff like Tennant.

On top of that, you get all the alternative versions of the album's singles run. The single remix of "Left to My Own Devices" condenses the song into "just" five minutes but pulls it off beautifully by having been slightly re-recorded, with plenty of effort put in to make it still sound like a unified piece instead of those missing minutes making their absence very known even if you are familiar with the album version (plus the backing vocals on this version I feel are an essential addition). The single version of "It's Alright" is a full new recording from scratch and not only got a more pop song-like structure but Tennant also features more prominently and adds some additional verses of his own to make it even moreso (as well as a new bridge in the early 10" version, which was omitted from the final 7" mix on account of being "too pretentious"). I honestly prefer this version: the careful optimism of the original is still there but strikes even louder as it gets to have a more defined structure to play out in. "Domino Dancing" only ever got a straightforward single edit which hasn't been deemed exciting enough to be presented here, but the demo version is an interesting insight into the song's development (back when all Tennant had finished was that highlight chorus) and the alternative version is basically a drumless mix of the track, which alters the mood of the song considerably and gives it a cosy late night sunset vibe. It's all interesting from a fan-archeological perspective, but also it nicely works as a listening experience in its own right as well - certainly far better than the first two Further Listening discs.

Physically: In line with the other 2001 Further Listening reissues.

[Reviewed: 11/11/2024]

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