For years we underestimated the lyrics of Pet Shop Boys. Texts full of wit and mordacity, of literary and political references, of occurrences that today continue to enrich successful films like ‘Saltburn’ or surprise rappers like Cardi B.
Then, in recent times, when Pet Shop Boys had already established their status as a cult group, there came another time when perhaps we paid too much attention to the duo’s texts. What they had to say became the most interesting part of their music, the novelty, the news. The unmemorable thing about their latest album so far, ‘Hotspot’, is that it opened with a reference to Christopher Isherwood, author of ‘Cabaret’ and ‘Goodbye to Berlin’.
‘Nonetheless’, their post-pandemic album, contains a better balance of lyrics that can surprise us and melodies that we can hum without sitting down to think. The closing of the trilogy with Stuart Price and the establishment of James Ford seems responsible for this. The man largely responsible for the polish of Last Shadow Puppets and the detail of Arctic Monkeys is behind this album of measured orchestral arrangements.
The group has not dispensed with the electropop beats that characterizes them. In fact ‘Feel’ and ‘Bullet for Narcissus’ are some of the best on the album, the latter being about a tyrant quite similar to Trump. «His policies are simply stupid, he does not trust what he has not seen. “It’s so banal that it has become mainstream,” he jokes with vogue. But the true merit of ‘Nonetheless’ is that the ballads have not turned this album into a dream-dream designed-for-the-adult-audience. James Ford sharpens them.
On the one hand, ‘Why am I dancing’, in just 3 and a half minutes and avoiding ad nauseam repetitions, becomes the most memorable recording of ‘Nonetheless’, dealing with how we survived in a pandemic, and how we find solace in the music. Something similar to what the main single, ‘Loneliness’, tells us, very grown as the opening of the album, with another spectacular string section, compatible with its chanante mention of Ringo Starr
(“Like Ringo walking by the canal / Downcast and alone”).
On the other hand, in the second half of the album, the John Barry-like air that the arrangements of ‘Love is the law’ (inspired by Oscar Wilde’s stay in Nice when he got out of prison) or the strings of ‘A New Bohemia’ (about the queer collective Les Petitis Bon-Bons). In general, the tone of melancholy will always work in favor of Pet Shop Boys in mid-tempo songs like ‘The schlager hit parade’ or ‘The secret of happiness’, the latter between R&B and bossa. Without containing any possible hit, the last half works better, appears more integrated, than that of other “eclectic” albums like ‘Fundamental’. Simply, being the B side and acting as the B side.
There are ideas on this album that wouldn’t have been out of place on ‘Behaviour’ or ‘Very’, generally better when the self-tributes don’t go too far. The second single ‘Dancing star’ is a clumsy imitation of ‘Domino Dancing’, while ‘New London boy’, which is reminiscent of a mix between ‘Being boring’, ‘What have I done to deserve this’ and ‘West End Girls’ ‘, only rises as an independent recording when he decides to incorporate a sax as if this were a Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band record.
There and of course in its lyrics, which tell us about new and old kids in London, remembering the times when “everyone danced to Roxy and Bowie” and the “glam brothers.” In what is presented as “the great queer Pet Shop Boys album”, Neil Tennant remembers his arrival in London in ’73, with Bowie and T-Rex. Out there they may seem a little stuck in the past, but at the end of the day they are just joking: “Is everyone gay or am I kidding myself?”
