No has beens, these Pet Shop Boys

The Pet Shop Boys
"Release"
Sanctuary Records Group

They’re not as well known or as successful as U2 or the Red Hot Chili Peppers in terms of music sales, but they certainly are one of the longest-running pop groups/duos in history.

The Pet Shop Boys, composed of keyboardist Chris Lowe and singer-guitarist Neil Tennant, have still been coming out with impressive records despite the market being dominated by Eminem, Britney Spears, and other hip-hop and R&B artists.

They have already released "Disco 3" this year and it has found moderate success in the UK and US charts. Last year’s album was much better in my opinion. "Release" is nothing like the boys have been doing in more than their 20 years in music recording. It almost sounds like a Beatles album than one of their own.

Lowe and Tenant have always been known for their electronic sounds and heavily synthesized licks on their songs, but in "Release," it becomes quite the lost "rock ballad album" (that’s not necessarily a bad thing).

Home and Dry starts off the record and quickly introduces "new sound." The instrumental backing is very much that of a traditional rock group, including real (not synthesized) drums with a steady mid-tempo beat, a stacatto ostinato (vaguely reminiscent of the riffs on Police’s Every Breath You Take), a pair of electric guitar solos, and a much subtler use of samplers. The lyrics are quite direct, poignant in their simplicity.

I Get Along then plays immediately, which, in my opinion, is the best song I’ve ever heard from the boys. Somewhat Beatlesque in flavor (note the French horns, fade-out strings, and occasional "preverb" effect—a marvelously rich production), I Get Along might as well have been written and recorded in the late 1960s or early ’70s. Other writers have pointed out the likely influence of the group Oasis, although how much of that simply reflects Oasis’s own stylistic debt to the Beatles is open to speculation. Its soft rock beat—often wildly syncopated, the emphasis shifting from measure to measure—gains a harder edge during the chorus, backed by "power chords" on electric guitar. I Get Along is the second released single from the album and has almost immediately become a fan favorite.

As Birthday Boy ends with a somewhat enigmatic sound, London steps-in and although quite strange, is packed with such a beautiful melody. E-mail seems like a surprisingly direct track on an album with so many others that work on multiple levels. Appropriately enough, it opens with sounds that suggest logging on to the Internet and downloading files, but perhaps the most striking thing about it musically is its use of the popular West End Girls chord progression.

The heavy and upbeat Samurai in Autumn heeds the calling of such an ordinary track, but it still works (although the lyrics, which only has three lines being repeated over and over, can get a bit tedious). Love is Catastrophe is slow, dark, and doleful, while Here gives an uplifting spirit to the listener.

The Night I Fell in Love makes homosexuality seem like a lot of fun (for the straights of course) as they concoct a wild story about an 18-year-old boy who goes to a rock concert, meets the male star backstage, and ends up going to bed with him. Yeesh! And finally, there is You Choose, a slow, melancholy, cutie melody and arrangement (more or less a traditional rock ballad, dominated by guitar) serves as the perfect vehicle for such a serious, somber message. It is, oddly enough, a good ending to a rocky but disjointed album.

Here’s to hoping that the Pet Shop Boys get more than what they bargained for!

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E-mail: reuben_matthew@hotmail.com