Seriously, is there anything better than the Pet Shop Boys?

Performance as Spencer notes, it's the same tour set as covered in Pet Shop Boys Versus America. Also, PopArt for all the videos plus some hilarious commentary. After that not sure...

xpost yes -we have to have have one PSB thread for every rockism thread to maintain the balance

The Pet Shop Boys' first twenty singles...

Tom's mother of a starting post can't be equalled, I think. Just brilliant, on point writing.)

Well, I'm rarely referred to as a hipster (with good reason), so I might not be the one to ask. But in the case of "West End Girls," I just think the single sold itself. Where I went to college in rural Ohio, people didn't seem to care whether PSB were hip or not (these are people who also bought albums by the Outfield). There didn't seem to be anything elitist or precious or hip about the Pet Shop Boys. Enigmatic? Sure. Gay? Probably. But nothing that excluded anyone or made people feel like they were tapping into some newfangled underground. I don't think people paraded around with their copy of Please by the PSB like they did with, say, Life's Too Good by the Sugarcubes or Psychocandy by the Jesus & Mary Chain. It wasn't that type of record.

Conversely, "Don Juan" is one of the best songs they put out in their career, so I'm doubly pissed that a completely loathesome, unlistenable shitpile of an A-side caused me to blank the utterly sublime B-side for a good nine years.

(xpost: Introspective is the aural equivalent of attempting to treat pinkeye by shiving needles into your cornea and connecting them to house current. Very is good, but not nearly as good as Behaviour, largely because "Can You Forgive Her?" and "Go West" promise big but don't actually deliver. Other than that, Alfred OTM. Kinda.)

I don't know - it seemed like "Please" had the best songs, followed by "Actually", followed by "Introspective" - I still have those three on cassette. After that I stopped listening to them much.

(Also, of those three albums, the best songs are "Rent", "One More Chance" and "I Want To Wake Up" IMO.)

Also, "Why Don't We Live Together?" and "Two Divided By Zero" are easily the best tracks on Please.

also, Bilingual is horridly underappreciated (did any of that has to do with it being the first release by Sire (US, dunno about UK) and them not knowing what to do with it). I defy anyone to hear "Se a Vida E" and not smile.

I do wonder sometimes whether my love for Domino Dancing is due to the fact that it's the first freestyle song I heard.

xpost

I fear though they've entered the twilight zone where Bowie's at where every new albums a supposed return to form, but sadly falls short. Fortunately they haven't released their Tin Machine yet.

That would be a tough one for me.

I utterly despise "Domino Dancing" because it is limpid, unimiginative, derivative, plodding, crass, unenjoyable, unforgivable, stupid, ugly-sounding, gauche, pandering, insufferable and all-around awful, plus it features one of Neil Tennant's most embarrassing vocal performances to date. And yes, those fucking stupid "All day all day" chants make me want to kill.

I am seriously working myself up into a rage thinking about this song. The last song that made me feel this homicidal when thinking about it was "Rollin'" by Limp Bizkit.

-- The Ghost of Dan Perry (djperr...), February 24th, 2005.

Pushing through despite the sound, enjoying the commentary. Always On My Mind was huge in the South before the PSB's version, both Elvis and Willie Nelson versions.

if the sound is flawed, let me know so we can fix it. I thought it sounded fine to me this morning.

The links to download MP3s are broken – they all point to part 1. (The inline player works correctly.) But this is nice!

Links fixed!

thanks!

Okay, my entry to the whole podcast project is up, thanks to Scott and Alfred again for the invite!

http://rockcritics.com/2013/12/02/pet-shop-boys-critically-5/

Here’s the third in our series of PSB podcasts. This time Alfred Soto and I are joined by Ned Raggett to discuss Pet Shop b-sides, which leads into a discussion of: PSB’s Alternative (their double-disc b-sides collection); Sonic Youth vs. Pet Shop Boys; Diane Warren; Mick Jagger; Simon Reynolds… and much, much more!

specifically, Mick Jagger covering "Opportunities."

Downloaded these for listening on my commute and currently on the Woods/Soto/Molanphy discussion. Great stuff!

Two parts in, this is a great discussion.

Any love for "We All Feel Better In the Dark"? For me it's a highlight of the catalogue and a great moment in the Performance film, like Depeche Mode's "Waiting for the Night" rewritten as a quietly seductive club track.

Nice catch! Tbe songs were recorded during the same era.

it is my understanding that everyone loves "We All Feel Better in the Dark", although unless you're talking about the downtempo Disco 2 mix I don't see how you could associate it with being quiet

We all sound better in the dark

Speak up I can't see you

You don't think it has kind of a quiet and secretive feel, like something going on behind the scenes? It's no "Shameless" after all.

generally speaking sirens don't ever strike me as quiet and half of the song has sirens blaring over it, not to mention the screamed "GET DOWN!" sample or the heavily-filtered staccato off-beat synth line or the counterpoint syncopated sample on the verses

It splits the difference, in the end. Everything Dan notes is spot on, but it sounds like it's trying to be furtive/in the shadows (of course!) in the middle (or to the side?) of something chaotic.

supposedly it was originally "We All Look Better In The Dark" but then i'm sure you all know that. a better title either way imo.
it's worth it just for the way Chris says ".. and the beat is dead loud".

so how's speaking of sounding better in the dark, how's the quality of these recordings?

All of the voices come through just fine, even on my less than stellar car speakers, but the parts where Scott (I'm assuming) mixes in songs with your discussions drown out your voices and are in general really hard to listen to. Not that there are a lot of these, and not that they last all that long anyway, but still.

Their musical about the life of Alan Turing premieres tomorrow night as part of their orchestral show for the BBC Proms. Hopefully on iPlayer to listen to afterwards.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jul/20/pet-shop-boys-alan-turing-enigma-proms-tribute-interview

I was there last night. The first half the concert - an orchestral medley of their 80s material, followed by four songs rearranged by Angelo Badlamenti and sung by Chrissie Hynde, was fantastic, especially when Tennant came on and duetted with Hynde during 'Rent'.

The Turing piece was mediocre really, most pop musicians just don't have the musical vocabulary to be able to write a 45min orchestral piece that stands up and they were no exception, the spoken word and choral bits were clunky, and the whole effect was a bit Murray Gold. The one genuinely emotionally resonant bit was the disembodied voice of Gordon Brown apologising for the government's treatment of Turing.

Chrissie Hynde still looks cool as fuck on stage btw.

the whole effect was a bit Murray Gold

Oh dear. (I wouldn't go that far, I admit! While the effect was more in-the-moment than lingering, I appreciated the attempt at interpretive biography.)

That said, yeah, those opening pieces with Hynde. "Vocal!"

Listening to this now. Would pay $$ to see an entire show of PSB orchestral duets with Chrissie Hynde.

does anyone on here rep for Nightlife? I just can't get into that one (outside of "You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk")

Yep!

It's uneven but the first 3 tracks are really solid.
The other good ones are "Drunk", "Radiophonic", "Boy Strange", and "In Denial".

iPlayer link, good 'til mid-August.

That ]Smash Hits "obituary"...

https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2906/14193502729_27d2a922d6_b.jpg

*Smash Hits, rather.

haha that's great

I actually can't wait to see if the Smash Hits blog stretches on into 1986/1987... hoping that I'll be able to read some vintage Smash Hits reviews of PSB stuff, just to see how easy/harsh they are on their former co-worker. As for Tennant's own reviews for Smash Hits, naturally I agree with some and not others. I was particularly pleased to see that he "got" Soft Cell's This Last Night In Sodom.

Tennant's slick hair is so charming.

great image - also, The Untouchables were my first ever concert.

I imagine Chris looking at this photo and considering tweaking his image

Ha, yeah... when I saw it, I was like "fuck, Chris looks unusually chipper!"

A fine thing:

Pet Shop Boys recently announced plans to release on YouTube a collection of their @BBC TV performances from 1985 until 2012. The collection so far includes nineteen performances recorded on Top of the Pops, The Old Grey Whistle Test and Wogan. Link below.https://t.co/YRt3gO0nh5

— Pet Shop Boys (@petshopboys) October 30, 2020

I really like this new single "Desert Star". 1986 all over.