(Rhino)
The future's dark and the past is fading from view on the Pet Shop Boys' moving new album.
That leaves the brainy disco duo, 20 years after its debut, navigating a turbulent present with equal parts defiance and melancholy, fear and rage. They're the dance band on a techno Titanic.
The paranoid (or is it?) "Psychological" and the Orwellian disco of "Integral" bookend an album on which the political seeps into the personal. The centerpiece is the lush Dianne ("Because You Loved Me") Warren ballad "Numb," a plea for relief from a world that's closing in. In this context, that includes current events, and there's no relief in sight.
"Twentieth Century" and "Indefinite Leave to Remain," which conflate affairs of state and personal affairs, suggest that the most that can be hoped for is refuge in the arms of another.
There's hope in the rich music, too. The Pet Shop Boys and producer Trevor (Art of Noise) Horn have scored the album like a West End show, capturing the freedom and danger of "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show" and the disappointment and betrayal of "I Made My Excuses and Left."
On early hits like "West End Girls" and "What Have I Done to Deserve This," the Pet Shop Boys were notable for the way they obsessed over superficial pleasures. They've only gotten better as those pleasures have become harder and harder to come by.
San Antonio Express-News publish date July 19, 2006
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