Pet Shop Boys: Yes (2009)

(astralwerks)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The inability of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe to respond to or coalesce with pop as a morphing, trending force has scarcely harmed them in the way one might expect. If anything, their career began with a remarkable coincidence: that their utterly bizarre, unapologetic disco appeared at precisely the moment it felt just right, so right it could produce #1 hits on both sides of the Atlantic... for a while. Pet Shop Boys overcame their legacy of 1980s nostalgia three ways: a consistently brilliant body of work rife with top-caliber songwriting, a conscious effort not to lose the underground reach toward club scenes the world over, and an affinity with pop critics that led them to well-deserved acclaim.

For sure, they remain one of the best things going, and like Yo La Tengo and the Flaming Lips, they are preparing to enter their fourth decade without a significant loss in output quality and adventure. There has been a problem, though, which is that that same in-touch ideal to which these two pop geniuses aspire seems to derail them now and then. You can measure it like clockwork: every PSB album feels like a direct reaction to the criticisms of the one before it. And that wouldn't be an issue -- I worship these guys -- except that the pattern has started to become a bit predictable, and it traces a logical evolution that keeps getting interrupted. One of the reasons this band (as well as YLT and the Lips) has lasted is that they don't attempt an album every year or two. The prolific burst ended along with the '80s, which is great except an off-album can lead to a full three years or so of lost faith.

To explain, I thought Fundamental, PSB's 2006 offering, was their worst album to date. I found its posturing, beats, and songwriting all tired; the sarcasm and satire felt like attention-grabbing put-ons. In perspective, though, one could have called this in advance. The first Pet Shop album, Please, drew criticism for is wry, distant, emotionless runthrough of love song clichés that filtered chilly wit through a synthy Cole Porter songbook. Stunning shocker, then, that followup Actually not only stripped away the nastiness and revealed an eloquent vulnerability (songs about AIDS, being broke, and growing up gay in a religious household) but sold millions of records in doing so. Introspective, album the third, returned to brash goofiness and took it to the far end of the dance floor; Behavior was even more wounded, naked, and cathartic than Actually. Tennant and Lowe showed up in funny outfits with computer animated videos and smashingly glitzy tunes for Very, then came down to brutally honest self-evaluation and joy on Bilingual. Here come funny haircuts on Nightlife along with over-the-top vamping in the disco that's growing sort of stale here, the jokes hammering rather than suggesting. Release had tragic breakup and despair songs that weren't even dance music. And then Fundamental... the thrust being that the stripped-down, low-key Pet Shop Boys have become ever more confident and interesting (and at times unexpectedly moving), while the disco inferno big-show architects are diminishing with age.

That doesn't mean that they're not still coming up with superb dance music on their tenth album, just that much of it is quite sad, and almost none of it seems to come from some actorly, slick perspective. Yes finds PSB in an "on" year, and it's so intoxicating you'll forget why you ever made them leave. Stylistically, there's not much new here except a more seamless integration of the guitar bits by Johnny Marr that also appeared on Release, and better-than-usual string arrangements (courtesy Owen Pallett). The exception is the first single and opening track, "Love Etc.," which bounds in like some miracle with one of the strongest keyboard hooks in the band's history, plus a hammering chorus and sideways melodic menace that bends traditional PSB in just the perfect way to make it sound freshly strange. "All Over the World" carries the momentum forward with its hip hop-like Nutcracker mingling, but quickly settles into Behavior beauty and weariness.

The remainder of Yes is spent displaying PSB doing what they're best at. "Beautiful People" is the archetypal Pet Shop single: the yearning musicality of an outcast, sung with brightly lit passion and tension, unmistakably shaken by its sociopolitical subtext, just far enough underneath to have massive impact. "Did You See Me Coming," acoustic guitar and all, is classic Very-era banging. "King of Rome" is the requisite British slow jam with gorgeous Tennant falsetto, as shaken and lovable as ever. To hear them being themselves again, whether there or on the wonderful '80s throwback "Pandemonium," is to revisit so much beauty that's marked and aided outsider lives for a quarter century now. And Behavior fans in particular are bound to find six-minute closer "Legacy" the most exciting downtrodden moment in recent musical history. The songs' production doesn't innovate, but the writing has the feel of refinement that has sharpened to classicism... and not one cut isn't memorable or worthy of inclusion in this splendid, hallowed canon.

I bet that even if I asked nicely, 2012 wouldn't bring a Pet Shop Boys album without a crazy new look and thinly veiled songs about world news and culture that hold feeling at arm's length or merely provide a tongue-in-cheek impression of it. That's fine. These two are a treasure, one of the longest-running top tier groups going now or ever, and it's worth waiting through a coasting session from one of the best acts in the world to get to the good stuff. Yes is the good stuff, and it was worth the gap.