Pet Shop Boys ”Together”The last couple of years have been great for the veteran synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys – lead singer Neil Tennant and everything-else-guy Chris Lowe. In 2009, 25 years into their career, they released Yes, one of their best (and happiest sounding) albums ever, and they followed it up with a very retro retrospective tour, documented in the live album and DVD Pandemonium released earlier this year. Now they’re getting set to put out a new greatest hits collection.
The set’s called Ultimate and though the track-list leaves much to be desired, treading ground already well-documented in two previous compilations (1991’s essential Discography, and 2003’s massive PopArt), it does pick up one track each (definitely not enough) from their two most recent studio albums, and adds a new single, called “Together”. It’s a fine song, but hardly enough to justify buying another greatest hits CD. Chris and Neil largely cede the stage in the song’s video to two dueling gangs of dancers in a depressed looking workaday Russian (?) hamlet. It’s street toughs vs. a flock of ballerinas, who after an initial battle, teach each other their moves, hit the discos, and then put on a big show! Huzzah for Kinetic Young People! (The Pet Shop Boys make a couple of cameos, one at the beginning in costumes – Chris in his usual sunglasses, Neil with his usual big dog – and then again at the end looking on from the wings of the stage.)
Never mind their naughty, naughty name, the New Pornographers, a veritable herd of super-talented late-thirty/early-fortysomething Vancouverites, have put out five albums of smart, sharply ingratiating pop over the last decade. The New Pornographers aren’t so much a traditional band as they are a sort of indie-rock network whose members – most famous among them singer-songwriters Neko Case and Carl (A.C.) Newman – freely engage in high profile solo projects (Case’s Middle Cyclone was one of the most critically celebrated albums of 2009), or form other groups with each other and other local musicians.
Their latest album, appropriately titled Together hit stores last month, accompanied by the single “Crash Years” , and if ever the band is to break out of the indie-rock ghetto and score a major hit single on the pop charts, this will be the song to do it. The song is a sweet, summery ode to… well, ruin. Physical ruin. Personal ruin. Societal ruin. Economic ruin. Who knows. Take your pick. The New Pornographers leave us room to choose, and if we’re all so well-adjusted that nothing springs immediately to mind from our personal lives, the evening news has certainly presented us with a nice buffet of creeping dread to resonate with. (Is that oil I smell? Or just dead pelican?) Meanwhile, the band whistles a happy tune (literally) over big, airy guitar strumming, and one of the best instrumental hooks I’ve ever heard. As great as Case’s singing on the track is, it took me about a half dozen listens before I was even paying attention to what she was singing, I was so taken by the pizzicato bass-guitar-cello’s winking, nudging bum-bum-BUM-bump, bum-bum-BUM-bump hook.
It’s pretty much a recession-era street party of a song, culminating with a promise that “tonight will be an open mic”. Which could mean that tonight’s the night, you get up on a stage and embarrass yourself with recitations of your corny dead-dog poetry. Or it could be an exhortation: Engage! Dance! Sing! Like, democracy, baby! The band have put out a video for the song – one of those choreographed single-shot deals featuring a slow parade of multi-colored Busby Berkeley umbrella dancers performing on what looks like a freshly rained-upon, brick-paved boulevard. It’s clever enough, but sort of a drag. To really see this song in action, check out the band’s performance on the Jimmy Fallon show from last month:
