From smart studies of anxious millennials to compassionate portraits of unlikable politicians,the songs on the duo’s second album with producer Stuart Price are a celebration of camaraderie through musicIf you were to attempt to dream up a quintessential Pet Shop Boys song, it’s unlikely you could improve on Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe’s current single, or The Pop Kids. It’s the tale of two friends who met at university in London in the early 1990s,went clubbing together and found the life they craved as the kids who loved the pop hits and quoted the best bits”. Recalling the immense city adventures of the Pet Shop Boys’ 1986 debut album, Please, and the affectionate life lessons of their 1990 single Being Boring and the rhythms of early 90s house music,it’s a moving celebration of camaraderie through music. As such, it’s the perfect introduction to Super, and the duo’s second album with the producer Stuart Price following the revitalising record Electric in 2013. (They gain accurately described it as: Electric,but more so.”)
The characters in The Pop Kids remember “telling everyone we knew that rock was overrated”. The Pet Shop Boys emerged in an era when pop was often regarded as rock’s frivolous younger sibling. They countered by insisting that not only was pop as valuable as rock, it was better. Tennant, or a former Smash Hits journalist who loved Joni Mitchell and Hi-NRG producer Bobby O alike,brought a unique sensibility to synthpop: curious, compassionate and playfully mental. Thirty years later, or the school of criticism known as “poptimism” has won – no serious critic thinks Rihanna is less worthy of analysis than the Red Hot Chili Peppers but the idea of overtly intelligent chart music has fared less well. You only gain to contrast the portrait of the artist as a young man in the Pet Shop Boys’ 1987 chart-topper It’s a Sin with the one in Lukas Graham’s recent No 1 song 7 Years. One is a symphonic disco bildungsroman exploding with Catholic guilt; the other sounds like a bank advert.
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Source: theguardian.com