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

"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

Elysium was a sad record. I thought they were done.

To be quite honest with you, I actually thought the same. Electric turned out so well that I keep forgetting how low my expectations were for it!

Release has some other high points - I think London and Love is a Catastrophe are both pretty delightful.

Also rep for the opening three on Nightlife - amazing.

Leaving is a great song. I'm sure I liked a few other songs too but looking at the tracklisting, I can't remember which ones.

I really like Nightlife. I Don't Know What You Want and You Only Tell Me are both in my top 10 PSB singles. Love the Kylie duet too despite it being a little clumsy.

I love Nightlife a lot and agree that the opening salvo is breathtaking

I know that Nightlife has its fans, and those fans tend to really, REALLY like the record, but it has so far failed to grow on me. It's really frustrating, actually, because I'd really like to enjoy it like others seem to. It seems to be one of those records that there's no real consensus over - there's people who adore that record and others that could easily live without it.

"Yes" is a pretty good album but my expectations for it were ridiculously high considering how much I loved everything Xenomania was doing at the time. It is no exaggeration to say it's been my most anticipated album ever, by any artist. Disappointment was inevitable, but it does have some solid tracks.

"The Way It Used To Be" is probably my favorite PSB song of the past 10 or 15 years.

"Love etc." would have been perfect if it wasn't for that first verse. I don't know how it got past Brian Higgins, should've been vetoed immediately.

do you mean the "I believe that we can achieve" bit? I love it. He sounds like a lover using corporate jargon (hence the title).

No, no, I love that bit too!

I'm referring to the melody of "Boy, it's tough getting on in the world when the sun doesn't shine and a boy needs a girl..."

Also the lyrics are not great either.

I don't have a problem with that melody at all. In fact, I think 'Love etc.' is perfect as it is and there's literally nothing I'd change about it!

Melody is great, and a playful leadup to the bass melody of the chorus; lyrics are nothingy

So, I'm giving Nightlife another try tonight, and it's still not happening, really. I like 'I Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give It Anymore' and 'You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk', but I would put neither up there with their strongest singles, and I like the production on 'Boy Strange' and the sweeping chords on 'In Denial'... The rest is striking me as ranging from "dull" ('Vampires', 'Radiophonic', 'The Only One') to execrable ('Closer To Heaven', 'Happiness Is An Option', 'New York City Boy')

You didn't mention "Boy Strange" or "Footsteps."

'Boy Strange' is one of my highlights of the record - I love the production on it, the way that it moves from the acoustic-led verses into the lightly psychedelic choruses. 'Footsteps', I'd place in the "dull" pile (it doesn't really do an awful lot for me) and 'For Your Own Good' isn't too bad, but I don't really think there's much of a song there, even if there's some nice production touches.

Overall, though, I'm left with the same impression I've always had about Nightlife, in that I feel the songwriting isn't really that strong. I genuinely think that Bilingual is a far stronger collection of songs, even if the track order isn't the greatest they could have come up with and even though I can understand why the style of the record might not be for everyone.

I guess that for me, Nightlife and Release represent the first big "dip" in the PSB discography, which they managed to climb out of with Fundamental, before dipping again with Yes and Elysium before miraculously recovering a second time with Electric. I'm hoping that Super represents a continuation of the quality of Electric rather than the beginning of another dip, but I feel confident that they'll never make another record as bad as Elysium.

I'm very happy with Disco 3 and not revisiting the other 2000+ ones.

Which isn't even knocking the other ones, just that I'm completely happy with Disco 3 song for song.

Elysium is the only record without anything worth saving; even if Super sucks it will still have "Pop Kids"

I dunno, I think 'Leaving' is a keeper, and I have a soft spot for 'Ego Music', but yeah, I'm happy to forget about the rest!

"I'm Happy to Forget the Rest" is a good song idea/concept.

this is probably as much to do with my age as anything else, but I always thought of Bilingual as being the last album from their 'classic' period, or at least the last album where they were seen as a contemporary act, with everything from Nightlife onward a 'late-period' album. I'm surprised whenever I'm reminded that Nightlife was released only three years after Bilingual, I remember Nightlife being very much sold as a comeback record at the time? Bilingual is wonderful anyway, I'm surprised that so many people seem to think that it's one of their weakest.

Agreed. Bilingual felt like a followup whereas Nightlife felt as it were released 7900 years later.

Yeah, that's pretty much the way I saw it too. I seem to remember 'Se A Vida E' being everywhere in 1996, whereas by the time of Nightlife they seemed to be struggling commercially. I think Radio 1 were even no longer playlisting their singles by then?

Look at their American chart positions too.

I think that 'Se A Vida E' was the last of their big iconic hits, the ones that would probably be remembered by a majority of random people stopped in the street (looking at the UK chart placings 'You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk' actually reached the same position - they both got to #8 - but I don't think it had anything like the amount of radio play or general ubiquity of 'Se A Vida E')

(that said, although people remember 'Se A Vida E' I'm not sure that they remember it was a Pet Shop Boys song? I don't really have anything to back back this up, but I get the impression that people would be less likely to associate the song with the PSBs than their other best remembered hits, say 'West End Girls', 'Opportunities', 'Always On My Mind' and 'Go West'? maybe because they don't appear in the video?)

According to Wiki, Se a Vida was a considerable European hit.

More people here know "New York City Boy" than "Se A Vida E". It was a genuine hit in Canada.

looking at the UK chart placings 'You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk' actually reached the same position - they both got to #8 - but I don't think it had anything like the amount of radio play or general ubiquity of 'Se A Vida E'

As I remember it, it didn't... nowhere near! Apart from one TV performance of 'You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk' I actually don't recall hearing any Nightlife single on radio or TV, whereas 'Se A Vida E' was in regular rotation on radio and on MTV Europe etc. Weirdly, I remember 'I Get Along' and 'Home and Dry' getting far more radio play than any Nightlife single, although not to the extent of 'Se A Vida E' ...