Artist: Pet Shop Boys
Label: Parlophone Records
Released: 2012
Length: 51:02
Rating: 4.5/5
Quite a chunk of time has flowed by since the mid-eighties, when this duo exploded with the hit West End Girls. And they’re still here. You’d be hard pressed to find another pop dinosaur who has made it to this day without a break, with a consistent catalog of regular releases. Whether studio albums, DVDs, remixes or compilation collections. Once this duo dictated the evolution of synth pop rhetoric; today they’re considered the biggest gurus in the business.
If »Yes« was a sort of turn toward retro reference points in the arrangements and pleased Pet Shop Boys pop nostalgics in particular – I’m thinking of the sentiment of »Very« from 1993 – then »Elysium« is another step onward, in terms of bolder experimentation. Structured, of course, in the typical Pet Shop Boys manner of art synth pop electronics, which has always worked so appealingly and so genuinely, because it combined in just the right balance a huge talent for brilliant songwriting with the infectious listenability of evergreen melodies, backed by dance rhythms. Despite that last point, though, this time around Pet Shop Boys interestingly drift away from it and offer an album with more experimental credentials. The maturing of both musicians demands, in these new times, exactly the kind of album that »Elysium« is.
They wanted a different album, an album defined by the pulse of a chosen studio that offers a chosen sound. Not just any studio, but one owned by Andrew Dawson, a name linked with Grammy awards and the rapper Kanye West. For all of that, they had to fly out to the hot California sun in Los Angeles. A crowd of occasional studio vocalists, backing vocalists, singers who have worked with Adele, among others – the names Julia Waters, Luther Waters, Oren Waters, Maxine Waters – is the thing on the album that adds that pinch of specialness and difference to the Pet Shop Boys catalog. These are singers with pedigree and character. They showed up on the scene back in the sixties, when Motown was big across the pond. This time, though, Tennant and Lowe are once again joined by a whole host of proven musicians who help shape the sonic and energetic look of »Elysium«. A constant, then, that effectively widens the artistic reach of the sound, deepening it and shaping it for Pet Shop Boys more noticeably than anything since »Fundamental« (2006).
Once again there’s no getting by without singles, placed with an eye on commercial success. You can’t do without that. Winner was released as the first single. It’s a positively minded track with Tennant’s typical vocal charm, which remains the essential trademark of Pet Shop Boys’ expression. When we touched earlier on the influence of the California sun on the sonic landscape of »Elysium« (it’s named after the local designation of the area where Dawson’s recording studio is located), I stressed how important it was to harmonize the lead vocal with choirs of backing vocals. The track Hold On, as positive as can be, works like a number from a theater musical, and it’s precisely these choral chants that give the album its special weight and its distinctive departure. The album, again, doesn’t hide the typical touches of seasoned cynicism that stem from English black humor. An excellent experiment that fits the bill in this respect is »Ego Music«, which comes across as Tennant’s parody of himself (a track of minimalisms deftly woven into a whole, like the minimal brainpower of any random »egomaniac«), though the lyrics can just as well be pointed at any celebrity, especially at the ideal patient of every psychotherapist – the eternal child Axl Rose would be an easy fit. This track has a light touch of The Human League sentiment – by the way, Phil Oakey appeared as a special guest on the band’s previous album »Yes« (2009). The peak of Tennant’s theatrical comedy, introduced in the tradition of Pet Shop Boys rhetoric, reaches its cumulus in Invisible, yet another obvious point of self-parody, and Your Early Stuff also more than succeeds in holding on to that sentiment of cynicism. Tennant said in one interview that the track is actually a collection of versified snippets of sentences from taxi drivers who drove the two members from hotel to concert venue over the years of touring, especially the eighties.
Leaving is an excellent opening track for the new album, released as the second single. It carries the typical Pet Shop Boys engraving, Tennant’s striking vocal front and center with that “boyish android” tone of voice you can’t possibly miss, born for forging synth pop hits, dressed in a wash of synthesizer curtains from the tried-and-tested PSB formula. The dance rhythm actually comes to the surface only in the background. The spectral landscape of synth curtains takes priority, and, as always, Tennant’s vocal. Despite the nostalgic vibes radiating from the verses, it’s clear from the very first track that »Elysium« is a different album from its predecessor. It immediately puts forward that dreamy, cerebral moment that doesn’t usually soar above Pet Shop Boys singles, and that tells the musician that »Elysium« is an album that demands more focus in listening and less superficiality. For a Pet Shop Boys album, »Elysium« grows on the listener’s heart more slowly than you’d expect. On the other hand, the rest of the album, with its motivic and atmospheric variety from track to track, confirms that the first impression from the opener Leaving was absolutely right. So for the average Pet Shop Boys fan, this is a harder album to win over than you’d expect.
For all the retro nostalgics, even the real eighties PSB diehards, it’s worth singling out the track »A Face Like That«. It’s basically a track with hit potential (hit potential frozen in time), only the arrangement is damn close to the classic hits of the eighties and early nineties. A typical synthesizer curtain in the background with a melodic accompaniment that instantly throws you back to the albums »Actually« (1987) or »Introspective« (1988). With that kind of sonic approach to synthesizers, Pet Shop Boys were the driving force of their day, dictating the development of electronic pop, while today a track like this, frozen in time, sounds awfully friendly and above all stirs up a whole lot of nostalgia.
»Elysium« closes out extremely intensely. It’s slowly steered toward the peak of the finale by the excellent, sensitive, dramatic yet calm and, as always, instantly infectious Memory of the Future, with a classic melody you could place in any period of the band’s career, while at the same time PSB artfully chase the current charm of new-era art rhetoric! A bomb of a track and a candidate for release as the third hit single from »Elysium«. Behind it comes the ballad Everything Means Something, which has an infectious chorus melody. Dressed in the structures and melos of a chorus that even pop rockers Coldplay would envy! An extremely strong track with a barely noticeable, unpretentiously escalating build of atmosphere into a chorus crescendo, with one of the most beautiful and boldly compatible verse-to-chorus transitions on the album. The synthesizer drapes and added programmed loops, together with the slyly understated rhythmic texture of “hand claps”, come across as cerebral, dreamy, even transcendental, hence the possible parallels with the new Coldplay (the chorus of the track!!!). The album is wrapped up in grand style by one more hugely entertaining number, where the moment of dance disco rhythm is emphasized once again and the melody is built by naturally sounding orchestral elements in the background of the accompaniment. So it breathes retro sentiment again. That’s Requiem in Denim and Leopardskin, which will suck you into the world of glamour one more time for the grand finale. The glamour of the eighties and the late seventies, that is. The energetic vibe it captures keeps the moment of nostalgia clearly present, and even the rumbling walrus Barry White would quickly make friends with it.
As mentioned. Tennant and Lowe pulled off their main goal: serving up a different album. An album from under the California sun, with a different sound. An album that doesn’t necessarily shove dance rhythms at the listener first and foremost, but for a change opens up more room for building an atmosphere based on a subtle wash of electronic effects, sound loops and synthesizer drapes, with the occasional dreamy, even cerebral moment. And of course the indispensable Tennant vocal is with us again, probably to this day the main trademark of the entire synth electro pop genre.
»Elysium« delivers vivid layering both between the tracks and within them, and a strong definition in the arrangement solutions it settles on, and within the band’s established ritual of artistic growth it represents a new point of development. With this new release Pet Shop Boys confirm that their creative freshness and inspiration aren’t drying up in their mature years, and that the band keeps moving forward and is by no means standing still. Many Pet Shop Boys contemporaries, many, many of them, have been living off old glory for decades now. »Elysium« proves that Pet Shop Boys know no such pathos.
Line-up
Neil Tennant – vocals, keyboards, arrangements
Chris Lowe – keyboards, backing vocals, arrangements
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Chris Athens – mastering
Rick Baptist – trumpet
Lizzie Randall – vocals
Alex Brown – backing vocals (8)
Carmen Carter – backing vocals (8)
Lenny Castro – percussion (1, 9, 12)
Andrew Dawson – orchestral arrangements (1, 3, 6, 8, 9, 12); programming (3, 5, 11); guitar (3, 6); drums (6); keyboards (11)
Andrew Duckles – viola
James Fauntleroy II – backing vocals (1, 2)
Sam Fischer – violin
Vanessa Freebairn-Smith – cello
Matt Funes – viola
Pete Gleadall – programming (all tracks)
Endre Granat – violin
Clayton Haslop – violin
Joachim Horsley – conductor, orchestral arrangements (1, 3, 6, 8, 9, 12)
Ryan Hoyle – drums
Dennis Karmazyn – cello
Peter Kent – violin
Ana Landauer – violin
Tim Landauer – cello
Victor Lawrence – cello
Ben Leathers – orchestral arrangements (1, 3, 6, 8, 9, 12)
David Low – cello
Lisa McCormick – horn
Serena McKinney – violin
Neli Nikolaeva – violin
Vivi Rama – bass guitar (8, 12)
Mark Robertson – violin
Rob Schaer – trumpet
Sonos – backing vocals (6–8)
Jim Thatcher – horn
Adam Tressler – guitar (6, 9, 12)
Jessica van Velzen Freer – viola
David Walther – viola
Julia Waters – backing vocals (1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 12)
Luther Waters – backing vocals (8)
Maxine Waters – backing vocals (1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 12)
Oren Waters – backing vocals (1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 12)
Production
Andrew Dawson & Pet Shop Boys
Tracklist
1. Leaving
2. Invisible
3. Winner
4. Your early stuff
5. A face like that
6. Breathing space
7. Ego music
8. Hold on
9. Give it a go
10. Memory of the future
11. Everything means something
12. Requiem in denim and leopardskin
