Pet Shop Boys, Electric

The Pet Shop Boys are certainly feeling creatively inspired at the moment, with Electric arriving hot on the heels of last year’s excellent Elysium.

This latest offering from Messrs Tennant and Lowe, their twelfth, is also their first not to be released on Parlophone (they’ve opted to put it out on their own x2 instead), but the boys’ quality control remains exceptionally high.
Though the overall mood of Elysium was reflective, Electric finds PSB in party mode, a fact flagged by the opening track, ‘Axis’, a superb piece of thumping electro, featuring a robotic vocal sample repeating the words, “Electric energy”. ‘Bolshy’ is a vintage slice of acid house, whilst the pulsating ‘Love Is A Bourgeois Construct’ (it’s hard to imagine a more PSB title) is one of the highlights, with Tennant’s lyrics boasting the humour that;s a staple of the duo’s catalogue, particularly in the lines, “I’ve been thinking how I can’t be bothered to wash the dishes or make the bed/What’s the point when I could dust instead?”
Tennant, an underrated singer, excels himself with his breathy vocals on the ode to hedonism ‘Flourescent’, and delivers such terrific lines as “Life’s a gamble, throwing the dice/Every scandal has its price”. Like all great artists, Pet Shop Boys are comfortable wearing several different hats, and they do a superb job of conjuring irresistible grooves on Electric. Indeed, you could easily mistake the throbbing house tune ‘Inside A Dream’ for the work of some up-and-coming dance act.
The only melancholy note hit on the album comes with a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘The Last To Die’ – which, unlike their previous covers of stadium anthems by U2 and Coldplay, is notable for being delivered with sincerity rather than irony. But, overall, uptempo party tunes are the order of the day. They sign off with the suitably euphoric ‘Vocal’, another account of nocturnal adventure, which features a further deliciously witty line from Tennant, dance music’s very own Oscar Wilde: “I like the singer/He’s lonely and strange/Every track has a vocal – and that makes a change.”
Expect to see this album featuring on many critics’ year-end lists.