Album Review: Pet Shop Boys – 'Hotspot'

As the group responsible for my two favourite songs of all time – ‘West End Girls’ and ‘What Have I Done To Deserve This?’ – I eagerly seize on each new Pet Shop Boys release, keen to explore their latest manifesto and musical direction. Hotspot completes a trilogy of albums PSB have been working on since 2013 with producer Stuart Price, and has a thematic focus on Berlin – a city that’s become a spiritual home for Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe over the past decade.

Their affinity for the German capital makes sense, given its extraordinary history of electronic music and thriving contemporary techno scene. The Berlin influence is evident straight away on the opening ‘Will O’ The Wisp’, a thumping electro number in which Tennant – via his trademark deadpan delivery – portrays a thirtysomething trying to make his way in the city: “Maybe you’ve gone respectable / A wife and kid and all that / Working for local government / And living in a rented flat”.

As was apparent in One Hundred Lyrics & A Poem, a career-spanning anthology released in 2018, Tennant is one of British music’s great wordsmiths. “Happy people/ Living in a sad world,” goes the refrain of ‘Happy People’ – a nice capsule summation of PSB’s output. The same tune also finds Tennant singing the memorable lines, “The sense of epic grandeur at the end of a summer’s day / The sense of so much missing when the world gets in the way”.

Hotspot also delivers on the musical front, with the group variously detouring into swaggering funk-pop on ‘Monkey Business’, brooding ambience on ‘Hoping For A Miracle’, and bittersweet balladry on ‘Burning The Heather’. The finest track, though, might actually be the closing ‘Wedding In Berlin’, a scintillating techno workout which – in a very PSB move – incorporates an ironic matrimonial fanfare. As we enter the new decade, Pet Shop Boys remain one of the finest acts in pop.

Hotspot is out now.

8/10

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