Review:

on 2011-03-25 CharlesMartel Said:

Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Poparama.

The Pet Shop Boys personified it. Tennant wrote for the magazine Smash Hits and so he thought he knew exactly what the perfect pop song would sound like. Almost as if to prove a point, he formed the Pet Shop Boys and then he wrote that perfect pop song - again and again and again. The result was a career of huge success for the band based on a pretty formulaic approach to what sells. But did they get it right! The downside of this was that, in essence, the Pet Shop Boys were as much a manufactured band, a product, as the pretty-boy pop prats and the vacuous bimbettes which flood our airwaves and debase themselves on our TV screens today. The difference was that the Pet Shop Boys were a product of their own creation rather than being a product of Simon Cowell or others of his ilk.

The Pet Shop Boys defined eighties simple electronic pop and produced a series of evocative singles. Unlike some of their contemporaries, especially the new romantics, they did not strictly adhere to the endlessly optimistic outlook which bedevilled pop at the time. They frequently merged the bleak and soulless urban environment of the post punks, with the fantasies, aspirations and desires of the largely teenage audience to which they appealed. The result, I have to say, was pretty much irresistible. This, their first album, although lacking some of the lush production of their later fare, is by far their best work. The songs are tight and evocative of the spirit they wish to conjure up. And if the point of music is to dance, well then this album scores plenty of points on that basis alone.

What perhaps made the Pet Shop Boys rather unique was that they were unashamedly gay, and in that sense, along with Jimmy Sommerville of Bronski Beat and the Communards, helped push the boat of sexual orientation equality out into the wide open sea of broad acceptability. Undoubtedly a good thing, there is always a danger that they appeal as a consequence, to a narrow niche. Happily, with the Pet Shop Boys, they did not. Their music appealed to a broad cross-section of people and this has sustained them across the decades their career has lasted.

But, as an aside, I can recall when this came out, an acquaintance of mine, with somewhat Neanderthal views on the role of the male in society, music and the bedroom, derided this on the grounds of the sexuality of the band members. It was not, in his view, music for real men, unlike his favourite band of the time, Judas Priest. I would love to encounter him again just to see if his views have changed at all since Rob Halford came out some years ago.

Although this is not really what I would call my style of music it still has a place in my collection for the memories it brings back. It was perhaps too close to the unacceptability of the New Romantics with their nauseating incessant optimism amid a time of decay, though lyrically they were often worlds apart from that, as "West End Girls" shows. In many ways, it is music which defined all that was wrong with an era and with an approach to popular music, but you still have to just love it.
Rating: 6/10