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Pet Shop Boys:
Never being boring Teaming up with Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr on their seventh album, the Pet Shop Boys prove after two decades they've not run out of steam. The duo talk to Weekender about their new sound and the state of pop. Are the Pet Shop Boys the greatest pop group of the last 20 years? Depends on how you define a pop group. Other people have made better records - the first Stone Roses album, Massive Attack's Blue Lines, Mercury Rev's Deserter's Songs - but you'd be hard pressed to find any other band with such a consistent run of quality pop tunes as Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe. From the early thrills of West End Girls and Opportunities through the eurobeat stomp of In The Night to the downbeat charm of Rent and Being Boring to the anthemic Can You Forgive Her? and Go West to the... well, you get the point. Combining intelligence and articulacy with a sure-footed pop sensibility, the Pet Shop Boys are a British Institution in an entirely good way, like fish and chips, cream teas and Vaughan Williams, as opposed to a wholly irritating way, like endless rain, traffic jams and the Midlands. Release, Tennant and Lowe's seventh album, heralds a quietly dramatic change in style for the pair. Dominated by a new guitar sound, the duo were joined in the studio by former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr. Lowe says: "It's the first time people have not described our new album as typical Pet Shop Boys, which is quite intriguing." Tennant adds: "We have never been electronic purists like Depeche Mode. Although we have always used electronic technology, we have not necessarily used electronic sounds. "If you think back to Se A Vide E we used Latin drums. Even on our first album there were guitars and strings. We have always tried to change the sound for each album. That's why we get frustrated about people describing our sound as 'typical Pet Shop Boys' when what they mean is nice, memorable tunes sung by me," he jokes. "I think this is the most melodic album we have ever made." It is not the first time the duo have teamed up with Marr. "We first worked with Johnny on Electronic's Getting Away With It," recalls Tennant. "And he has worked on some of our other albums. He is like our official guitarist. Johnny is so inventive and he has a really melodic style which suited this album. He ended up working on eight out of the 10 tracks." Tennant and Lowe first met in 1981 in a London music store where they discovered they had a mutual passion for hi-energy disco and decided to start writing songs together. Two years later they had thought of a name, composed a few tunes and knew they did not want to be part of a pop band. At the time Tennant was assistant editor at Smash Hits and while on an assignment to New York he met legendary producer Bobby "O" Orlando. The result of this meeting was a rapped ballad which became a minor club hit called West End Girls. This led to a record deal with EMI and in 1985 a revamped version of the song reached the top of the charts, kicking off a long list of hits stretching across two decades. Their latest single, I Get Along (released last Monday) looks set to be their 34th chart success. As veterans of the music industry, the pair are critical about some of their 21st-century musical contemporaries. "There is a lot of rubbish pop music around at the moment and formulaic R&B," says Tennant. "It would be nice to have something which is more inventive. There are acts like The Strokes which are good but people should stop doing these endless ballads which have a key change in the last chorus - it's so dreary. I also think Pop Idol is a weird phenomenon of our time - a bit like the toy Clackers was in the 70s. It will come and go. If you look at the impact Pop Idol has had on music in general, it's absolutely minimal." While the duo's career has lasted five times the length of most of today's pop acts, they still feel they are regarded as outsiders. Tennant says:
"I never felt that we quite fitted in even when we were at
the height of our popularity in '87/88. We have always seemed odd.
We were never in the mainstream even though we had several number
ones. We have never tried to fit in any movement of what is happening
at one time. We always do our own thing and try to maintain our
own identity."
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