When fans queue up for a new Pet Shop Boys album, they expect to be delivered to an ethereal netherworld of spiraling synthesizers and pounding bass. They will not be disappointed by the English pop duo’s latest album, Yes.
Every track is a new candy, fresh from the box and ready to be unwrapped. One track blends into the next, yet each delivers a distinctly new breath of sticky-sweet British electropop. Neil Tennant croons to the masses with his baby’s breath vocals, and keyboardist Chris Lowe keeps things fresh with ever-changing sounds. One minute has you hopping around to a deep bass thump or a marimba galloping up and down the scale, and the next has you breaking out your slow-mo for a solemn, Arabian-sounding strings procession. All of this is consistently backed up by a somewhat phony, poppy backbeat.
Although the tracks may sound a little pre-packaged, it is to be expected. Tennant and Lowe have been in the business of dance music since 1981, and they know that laundered sound is a symptom of the genre. Their many fans in the Eastern Hemisphere also know this and have come to accept it. Moreover, they have come to appreciate it. For the past 20 years, the Boys have been a staple amidst house party playlists and the CD players of starry-eyed teenagers. In that time, they have showed a legitimate career success, tossing four singles and 22 Top 10 hits up the pop charts.
The Boys’ songs are diverse — both in theme and physical content. This has no doubt helped to catapult the duo past the masses of pop-artist wannabes into the stratosphere of record sales (to date, they have sold about 50 million worldwide) and international recognition. No one else could put out an album that includes a track like “This Used to be The Future,” which provides a robotic, disparaging look at the future, along with a track like “Love Etc.,” a power-pop love ballad that could have come straight off the soundtrack of “The Breakfast Club” or any ’80s chick flick.
As far as physical content goes, the duo takes its inspiration from classical music, other pop artists and the Boys’ own creativity. With Yes, they have created the perfect blend of all three. It is hard to realize the full magic of this until you listen to a track like “All Over the World” and experience the main theme to The Nutcracker played in a keyboard-generated brass orchestra and superimposed over a modern pop beat. Beautiful.
If you could cut out all the Prozac-nation cynicism, look past the cheesy beats and sugar-coated vocals, into the heart of what the Pet Shop Boys do, what you would find is the perfection of a trade. Yes is cheesy, but deliciously so. Moreover, it is meant to be that way.
“We were always kicking against formulas,” Tennant said in a recent interview with the UK’s Telegraph. “It was about maintaining our dignity and not being fake.”
Although it may seem like the ultimate irony, this declaration has a ring of truth to it. Maybe we all have something to learn from these two, who have been trying for over 20 years to prove to us that there really is not much difference between what is artificial and what is real. Past, present, future — they are all somewhat the same. At any rate, they can all be drawn together to create something entirely new, authentic and beautiful. Maybe it is time to toss aside our pretentions, lower our high standards for music and let ourselves float down the river of their intoxicating pop grooves. Who knows what we could be missing out on? Maybe it is time to just say ‘Yes.‘
4 stars out of 5.
