Snippets from Chuck Eddy’s Village Voice review of Introspective (“18 Shopping Days Left,” December 13, 1988), which I’ll hopefully comment on later (feel free to jump in yourself). My only general comment is that the review is not as over-the-top about PSB as I half-remembered it being. In fact, it skews somewhat in the other direction: Chuck seems unconvinced by (and skeptical of) PSB overall — they pale next to his beloved Exposé, who are cited three or four times here — though in the end he can’t resist the “confusedly jubilant” pleasures of what he admits is “the best Pet Shop album.”

(Semi-interesting sidenotes: 1. Below Chuck’s review is Vince Aletti’s “Single Life” column, a rundown mostly of the acid-house hits then storming the UK, but with a few choice — and very complimentary — words about Introspective also, i.e., “six songs that ransack dance idioms from Brooklyn to Chicago with affection and wit.” 2. The second review after Chuck’s is Frank Owen’s review of the Pop Tarts, cheekily headlined, “Shopping in America.” Who remembers the Pop Tarts? No one? Thought so. I recall them being a kind of similar-to-PSB critical big deal post-something-or-other at the time, but nothing I read about them actually convinced me to listen to them. To this day, I’ve still not heard a note of their music, I don’t think.)

“Introspective‘s got the first two Pet Shop cover versions, both of which apparently make fun of the originals; Tennant recites most of ‘Always on My Mind’ as if Elvis/Willie’s longing and regret were impossible, reads Sterling Void’s ludicrous acid-protest ‘It’s Alright’ almost as blandly. After 15-plus post-Bowie years of music-about-musicmaking, contemptuous theatricality like this ain’t so much subversive as just too fuckin easy.
“But so’s this analysis. Unless you’re of Exposé’s ingenuous ilk to say in the post-Bruce age that you’re posing is only to say you make no conscious stab at the intentional-honesty lie. Soul-sincerity’s as phony as phoniness by now, and distance-from-material encompasses all suckup-to-rockcrit crud from Los Lobos to Mudhoney. British whiteboys singing like British whiteboys beat British whiteboys singing like black men; ditto for products admitting they’re products.”

“And nobody knows products like these consumers of oligopological output in the dead-end world where everything’s for sale and money talks and streets are gold, these un-Iggylike pet-shoppers who’d rather buy a dog than be one. We’re all prostitues, shopping for someone to pet, so romance equals commerce: ‘I love you/You pay my rent,’ ‘You always wanted a lover/I only wanted a job.’ Introspective argues we’re taught competition as babes, eventually left not to our own devices but choiceless. The denial of self-determination stupidly distorts reality, but then again when I first heard ‘West End Girls’ three years ago I was ‘sold’ right away ’cause (just like ‘All the Young Dudes’) the first two lines suggest young people should blow their brains out. The cashier took my money.”

“Theoretically, these Boys negate my entire worldview. Not because they’re wimps (I identify with their wimpdom — they could probably kick my ass, actually), but because their ironic distance adds nothing, ever. Tennant’s toasty tongue-texture and minimalist language are fine, but too often he’s content to let us know he’s performing — he walks too fast and talks too slow, too constricted and stylized and arid, ‘conversational’ only if people who read books while you’re talking to ’em over the phone don’t make you nervous.”

“When the Pet Shop Boys succeed, they succeed despite themselves. Tennant’s monotone usually communicates more when it’s singing than when it’s rapping; in parts of ‘It’s a Sin,’ ‘What Have I Done to Deserve This?’ (where at first he’s as passionate as his duet partner Dusty Springfield), and ‘Rent,’ something’s at stake. I was raised Catholic and I’m a househusband and Bee Gees fan, so lines hit me here and there. The masses take ‘Always on My Mind’ and ‘What Have I’ at face value (a la ‘Born in the U.S.A.,’ ‘Sweet Dreams Are Made of This’) because face value is the only way these songs could possibly matter.”

“If the Boys are still more ‘about disco’ than ‘are disco,’ well, Poison’s more ‘about rock’n’roll’ than ‘are rock’n’roll’ (‘Your Mama Don’t Dance’ might be a joke too, y’know), and Introspective‘s confusedly jubilant enough to earn the comparison. These sly devils are a (plastic) pop group, not some late-capitalist zeitgeist. But sometimes they’re even funnier than the real thing.”

“Yet I’m left breathless by the hog-stomping Baroque disco-grandeur (shades of Alec Constandino’s Hunchback of Notre Dame) that opens Introspective, a Shopping Channel sellout that’s the best Pet Shop album for the same reason ‘West End Girls’ is their best single: most gleeful hooks, most persistent throb, most flamin maneuvers, most evocatively dopey writing, least cynical bullshit. The groove’s more sensuous, finally closer to Exposé than Erasure.”

As promised, a few snippets from Barry Walters’s Voice review of Please, dated June 3, 1986. There’s a lot of funny and interesting stuff in this review, and it’s tricky quoting bits from it sans context — much of the review is centered around the then-merely perceived notion of the Pet Shop Boys’s gayness — so I’ll limit my sampling to specific bits which hopefully won’t require too much additional cross-explanation.

“I don’t know if the Pet Shop Boys are gay. If not, they should be, judging from Please, a top 10 hit. They aren’t of the Boy George I’m-so-camp-I’m-sexless variety. Nor do they wear bondage gear like early Frankie or fishnet stockings over their faces like Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Their look is post-clone gay-next-door. The Boys could pass for straight, but their record collection gives them away. They used to be big fans of Bobby Orlando, who produced hits for Flirts, Waterfront Home, and Divine, as well as the original version of their own ‘West End Girls.’ Nowadays Pet Shop Boys are to hiphop what the Bee Gees were to disco, but with brains.”

{It’s remarkable, in a way, just how forgotten is the fact that “West End Girls” was a white UK version of — in 1986, apparently un-hyphenated — hiphop (though not the first; “Wham Rap,” anyone?), perhaps because the song’s obvious disco underpinnings muddied the waters a bit. (Tennant has said repeatedly that he had “The Message” and The Waste Land in mind.) The Bee Gees “but with brains” line is a triumph, and should’ve been cited in the Pets’ ad copy.}

“The songs on Please are about love, lust, making money, and watching civilization decay. Their music isn’t the Jesus and Mary Chain, but neither is it Howard Jones.”

{Which do you choose, the hard or soft option? The Jesus and Mary Chain reference is entirely apt, but it seems so bizarre to me now to think that Please and Psychocandy occupied the same universe at roughly the same time; one of these records feels to me like it was recorded yesterday, the other feels like it was recorded… well, 28 years ago. I still love parts of Psychocandy, actually, but it hasn’t felt like a part of the present since the year it was released.}

“Things can’t only get better, but to the Pet Shop Boys, sticking together helps. Songs like ‘Two Divided by Zero’ and ‘Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)’ are classic cases of boy bonding, and you can imagine vocalist, ex-Smash Hits writer Neil Tennant singing them to his buddy on keyboards, Chris Lowe. On the spoken verses, Tennant’s sinuously prissy diction suggests a private school lad gone bad. When he sings the choruses, his thin, vibratoless tenor resembles Al ‘Year of the Cat’ Stewart.”

{Tennant quickly established his vocal gifts — “vibratoless” is apt, and part of the appeal — so the Stewart comparison, frequent in ’86 and ’87, didn’t follow him around forever.}

“Viewed as a straight love song, ‘Why Don’t We Live Together?’ updates Al Green’s ‘Let’s Get Married.’ Heard as a plea of devotion from one man to another, the song’s domestic dream becomes daringly political, even revolutionary. Maybe I want the Pet Shop Boys to be something they’re not. Yet after countless tales of woe and sleaze from smalltown boys not glad to be gay but still selling a walk on the wild side, I can’t help but get excited by a man who wants to settle down and get down too.”

“…smalltown boys not glad to be gay but still selling a walk on the wild side…” Wonderful stuff! It’s interesting to compare Walters’ 1986 are-they-or-aren’t-they comments on this song with Alfred Soto’s insistence, in 2013 (from our first PSB podcast*) that “Live Together” seals the deal on the question of their gayness.

More Voice/PSB throwdowns to come.

* And BTW, there will be more PSB podcasts eventually. Alfred and I recorded a fourth, with a special guest, which we had to scrap because the audio quality was so bad. but we hope to re-do it again, and we have others in line also. The whole thing is held up right now by technical (and employment) issues, but hopefully we’ll be back with some chats in the not-too-distant future.