Pet Shop Boys -- Super (another Stuart Price production)

Also sounded amazing live.

Yeah, I fucking love this. Vocals and production sound more than fine to me.

Love this song. I can't believe the difference between this and the tired sounding album they put out just four years ago. It's so great to have them properly back.

This is a very personal opinion but I've progressively gone from absolutely loving Tennant's vocals to absolutely hating them. To the point of thinking they are embarrassingly bad. And by this I mean I still love them in the old stuff and hate them in the new stuff. But that's just me.

Well IMO one of his most embarrassing performances is "Domino Dancing" and ppl generally are all over that nonsense so my take is that everyone has their own unique relationship with his voice

I like that most of you are reacting positively, because I love the PSB so much. But on the other hand, what is wrong with you, people??? ;)

Lol, DJP, you had to bring up "Domino Dancing", didn't you?

I'd like to hear Madonna cover this one.

xp: well duh

All day, all day!

But yeah, that I'd take this over the majority of Elysium or Release goes without saying, it seems to me that they're carrying on from where they left off with Electric, which is absolutely fine by me because that album was fucking great.

Sorry, LOVE this.

This is excellent!

Can Stuart Price produce the next New Order album, please?

just amazing, their best single since I Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give It Anymore IMO.

I *love* Domino Dancing.

yeah, I'm not feeling this... "cold" is the right word.

I liked the intro, but the verse and chorus didn't do much for me - pretty bland compared to most of the songs from Electric. It's the kind of song I could see enjoying in the album but not as a first single. I don't think Neil's voice has gotten any worse over time though, it's the best part about this song!

This is SO GOOD

Needs a Sarah Cracknell version too

with the melancholy tied to the memory rendered as implicit rather than explicit.

This is a lovely observation btw

Listening again, love it. My favourite single since "Before".

There could be a whole album of early/mid-90s artists (Robbie Williams et al.) covering this song.

Listening again, love it. My favourite single since "Before".

― Chuck_Tatum, Tuesday, February 23, 2016 8:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I wouldn't say it's their best single since 'Before' myself, particularly as Electric had the wonderful 'Love Is a Bourgeois Construct' on it, but I still really like this a lot after countless plays. Part of me, though, is hoping that there are bigger and better highlights to come.

I want to draw so many lines back to Behaviour with "The Pop Kids"; not only is it a thematic successor to "Being Boring" but I keep hearing it as a musical cousin to "So Hard"/"The End of the World" (with heavy lifts from "It's Alright" but that breaks my thesis so I'm pretending they don't exist, ha)

I hear the "The End of the World," especially the tone of quiet dread.

I forgot about "Bourgeois"! So good. And "Thursday" too. But I like this better.

It's not really a single (I think it was put into limited release for Record Store Day?) but "Fluorescent" is the song on Electric I keep going back to the most, followed by "The Last To Die"

Some of their best songs from the last couple of albums were never released as singles unfortunately.
"Here", "Fugitive", "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show", "All Over the World", "The Way It Used to Be", "This Used to Be the Future", would all have made better singles than most of what was chosen.
I mean "Numb", really ?

"Numb" was a total cash-in on the World Cup tbf

'Integral' should have been a huge hit.

I'm listening to Yes for the 3rd time this week, it's pretty great isn't it? Like maybe a tiny step below Very, IMO of course

IYO

By the way, how dumb is it that Yes didn't name their 2011 album Pet Shop Boys? What an opportunity wasted...

Yes is a bit of a mixed bag and a step down from Fundamental for me. There's some great stuff on there like Love etc, More Than a Dream and The Way It Used To Be which are some of the best songs they've done since Very. There's a decent of songs that are pleasant but I can never really remember that well, King of Rome, Did You See Me Coming?, Legacy, Building a Wall etc. Beautiful People and Pandemonium are really bad and seem like the direction that they continued on for Elysium.

Oh and This Used To Be the Future should have been in on the proper album. Amazing song.

I still think 'Love etc.' is fantastic, but Yes is one of those records I don't return to very often. I like it more than Elysium, Release and Nightlife, but it doesn't even come close to touching Bilingual, Fundamental or Electric, IMO.

I find Yes about as uneven as Bilingual. I'd have a hard time deciding between those two if I were to rank their albums. Out of all the albums since Very, Electric is by far my favourite followed by Fundamental.

I'm hoping Super can be a similar level to Electric as I'd love them to follow a great album with one that's equally good. I don't think they've done that since Very followed Behaviour.

Bilingual has grown on me massively over the last couple of years, it was just an album that was in the awkward position of being the follow-up to Very and had a song order which didn't really showcase the songs in the best possible way. Song for song though, I think it's leagues ahead of Yes.

Descending order:

Fundamental
Electric
Nightlife
Bilingual

don't rate the rest except for salvaged tracks

Yes has "Love Etc" and "The Way It Used to Be," the dreary Release has "You Choose," "Home and Dry," that Eminem song, and a wonderful B-side called "Sexy Northerner."

I adore "Home and Dry" so much

for me it takes off when Chris drops in the WE'RE GOIN HOME bit, sounding like he's got a cold. I love his bit in "Thursday" too.

Yeah, 'Home and Dry' is one of my favourites too. It absolutely towers over the rest of that record, IMO.

I freely admit that a lot of my fondness for Release as an album lies in how much goodwill I give the rest of the songs due to their proximity to "Home and Dry"

I'm listening to Bilingual now for the first time in months and it's really hitting the spot... 'Discoteca' sounded as wonderful as ever, and apart from the ill-advised decision to put 'Metamorphosis' and 'Electricity' so close together and so early on in the album, it sounds very much like a strong PSB album to me. I can understand in some ways why it's not an album everyone likes, but I think it's an unfairly criticised record sometimes.

If I made a compilation of PSB's post-Very highlights, I'd put 'Up Against It' on there in a heartbeat. What a fucking song.

I think I'd put Release as my least favourite PSB album. The two singles are ok but they'd be close to the bottom if I ranked all their singles. The Samurai In Autumn is the only album track I really have any time for. Having said that, it doesn't have anything as awful as Winner, Give It a Go or Hold on,

"Winner" has the exact opposite effect on the rest of Elysium for me than I get from "Home and Dry"/Release; I dislike the song so much that it drags the rest of the album down for me even though there are a couple I like in isolation ("Ego Music", "A Face Like That")

Hmm. 'Winner' isn't my least favourite song on the record, I think there's a hell of a lot worse on there, which I guess says a lot about the record.

I really like 'Leaving', though, and I have a soft spot for 'Ego Music' which isn't a great song but I enjoy Neil's performance on it and the lyrical theme of it.

"Leaving" is good enough that I forget it comes from Elysium, lol

It's weird how "Burn" doesn't stick in my mind as much as it should. Maybe a relisten or two.

Taking my daughter tonight for her birthday (like she knows the PSB from Adam, ha ha). Should be a blast as always. I can't wait for her to go to school on Monday and brag about it to her equally clueless friends.

I listened to this album again yesterday after not hearing it for a while, and 'Burn' struck me as being a clear highlight. This album has grown on me a hell of a lot.

Great show. My daughter went to a last minute sleepover so missed out. At the same time, about 2/3rds of the way through this little old dude on some sort of drug showed up in the row in front of me and spent the remainder of the show reacting to every song like he never ever expected the PSB to play it ("OMG, 'It's a Sin'!!!!!!"), hugging everyone, kissing the hands of ladies around him and otherwise being a distracting jackass. That and these three hulking Euro bros who spent the whole show hopping from empty seat to empty seat, bro-ing it up, bummed me out a bit.

"Burn" rules a lot

Burn, The Pop Kids, Happiness, Undertow and The Dictator Decides are the highlights for me. Super definitely isn't as consistent as Electric which is an album I'm still playing a lot, but it's a good mid-level Pet Shop Boys album. I'd put it on a similar level to Bilingual and Nightlife.

Yes to all the above, plus 'Twenty-Something' ... I'd rank it above Nightlife but below Bilingual (which has become one of my favourite albums of theirs)

I think "Sad Robot World" is incredibly charming.

WE'RE GONNA BURN THIS DISCO DOWN
TIL THE MORNING COMES

Ah yeah, and 'Groovy'!

GROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVY!

Look at me
Look at me

I pretty much like everything on this album apart from 'Say It To Me' ... surely they must be doing some work on the follow-up now?

06 Pazzo!
07 Inner sanctum
08 Undertow

^^ really into these three as a suite

I thought this album was very underrated. I like it just as much as Electric. "Say It To Me" > "Burn" > "Into Thin Air" is also a great trio.

Good remix, if not radically changed from the original:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WdjldHlSI8

They should have another album out next year, surely?