One record at a time: 362. Pet Shop Boys - Release

Having suffered a downturn in fortunes with their previous album, Pet Shop Boys decided to try a new approach for their eighth outing in 2002. "Release" sees Neil and Chris presenting themselves as 'musicians' rather than pop stars: bright costumes and wigs were thrown out and acoustic guitars and percussionists were rolled in. 

The degree to which this new approach succeeded is a matter of taste, but the sales figures do not lie. To me this album is the Pet Shop Boys nadir both commercially and artistically, but the extent of the failure took a while to register with the band themselves.

The lead single and opening track "Home and Dry" is somewhat misleading as it isn't representative of the wider album. The dominant synth refrain that runs throughout the song is quite brilliant and Neil's evocative lyrics paint a great picture - but once this track is done everything goes down hill. 

The vaguely Beatles-eque "I Get Along" is a dull commentary on British politics of the time and doesn't really hold any relevance in 2024. The excruciating soft rock continues until we reach a track called "The Samurai in Autumn" which is a semi-instrumental electronic piece that sounds completely out of place, but is all the more welcome for that. Some of the compositions here are quite good and it's just but the execution that lets them down. However, the same cannot be said of  "The Night I Fell in Love" or "You Choose" which are abysmal creations. 

I was about to write, "I don't play this album often," but the reality is I don't play this album at all. I own the original 2002 LP on white marbled vinyl which hasn't been played once and the less valuable 2017 remastered version has only seen action on one occasion. 1/5

One record at a time: 361. Pet Shop Boys - Nighlife

Having released their seventh studio album "Nightlife" in October 1999, the Pet Shop Boys decided to promote it with a world tour. Unfortunately this tour coincided with the bankruptcy of their promoter and a dip in their record sales. As a result of these misfortunes the tour often played to half empty venues and lost money hand over fist.

I attended the concert at Sheffield Arena and was embarrassed to see whole swathes of the auditorium screened off. I was already depressed when I arrived at the venue as somebody crashed into my car on the journey there; so finding the arena was completely lacking in atmosphere put the icing on the cake. As it transpired only 3,000 of the 13,000 seats in the venue had been sold.

When I went to look for my seat I realised it was on the front row, right in front of a speaker where I could see absolutely nothing. I and the people around me grew agitated and called over one of the stewards. As you can imagine, there were plenty of seats available for us to move to, but the vibes in the auditorium were not good.

The performance itself felt half hearted and it looked like everyone (audience included) were just going through the motions. Many years later I learned that during the interval for the show a depressed Neil Tennant suggested to Chris Lowe that they pack it all in and end the group. Fortunately Chris ignored the question and everything just carried on as normal. The date was 9th December 1999 and this moment is cited as the closet the Pet Shop Boys have ever come to splitting up. 

Like Chris, I would never consider knocking it on the head, but in 1999 it wasn't as much fun being a Pet Shop Boys fan as it used to be. The care free days of listening to "Actually" on the way home from school or the excitement of dropping the needle on a new KLF remix of "So Hard" felt a million miles away. We hadn't yet reached the nadir of Neil and Chris's career, but it was clear something had changed.

This album is a disjointed affair that tries to pull on too many strings. There's the weird country styling of "You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk", the disappointing Village People pastiche of "New York City Boy" and a desperate attempt to write for the American market resulted in the nonsense that is "Happiness is an option". 

Where the boys try to be original they fall flat with "Boy Strange", "Footsteps" and "The Only One" being the worst examples. The production on these songs is not sympathetic to the material and everything sounds less contemporary than previously. The boys must have realised something was amiss as they haven't worked with any of the album's three producers since. The only successful songs are the dance tracks "Radiophonic", "Closer to Heaven" and "For your own good" which remain closer to the natural Pet Shop Boys sound.

I remember seeing this vinyl record on the shelves of HMV a few months after the CD was released and thinking, "Why on earth have they released it on LP? That is so old fashioned". Consequently I didn't get round to buying a copy until four years later when the official website began selling off stock that had been held by their previous management team (replete with 'Promotional only' stickers). The second copy seen here is the more common remastered version from 2017. 2/5

One record at a time: 360. Pet Shop Boys - Bilingual

"Bilingual" came out in 1996 and was heavily influenced by the music the Pet Shop Boys had heard on their tour of South America the year before. Here I will be listening to one of two copies of the 2018 remastered version but I also have the original in my collection.

Back when it was released I had to force myself to like this album. The lead single "Before" was an immediate disappointment and I still don't enjoy it much. "Electricity" is hands down one of the worst tracks Neil and Chris have ever included on an album and "Metamorphosis" is a toe-curling rap that neither K-Klass nor Pet Shop Boys emerge from with much dignity. "A Red Letter Day" is a nice composition but a real mess when it comes to the production as the vocals are pushed too high in the mix and the God awful choir sound completely out of tune to my ears.

On the other hand, "It Always Comes as a Surprise" is a heartbreakingly beautiful song that is definitely the high watermark of this album. There are many elements to enjoy in this song with bossa nova beats, an epic Moog bassline and sincere lyrics that are delivered without a trace of irony. A masterpiece.

The production skills of Chris Porter are also to be found on the excellent "To Step Aside" which grooves along as Neil's considers what might happen if he were to give it all up. Johnny Marr adds a sparkle to "Up Against It" and "Saturday Night Forever" is much underrated. The success of the single "Se a vida é (That's the Way Life Is)" still surprises me, but there is no denying it has a life affirming charm and catchy melody. So there are some highlights here, but this material may not be easy listening for the casual observer. 3/5

One record at a time: 359. Pet Shop Boys - Alternative

"Alternative" is a triple album that collects together most of the b-sides and extra tracks issued on Pet Shop Boys singles between 1985 and 1995.

I bought my copy in 2005 for £11 which, for a record that seems to fetch over £200 today, seems a bit ridiculous. Yet in the halcyon days before the modern vinyl resurgence, nobody really wanted records like this and they could be bought quite cheaply. Unfortunately my copy is missing the sticker that originally sealed in the contents, but the discs themselves are immaculate. Given a choice of owning this copy or nothing, I will declare myself content.

The first five songs here seem to be a perfect illustration of the boys finding their feet as producers and songwriters. "A Man Could Get Arrested" is based on a track from the earliest days of their career and was written with Bobby Orlando. The clumsy "Disco Mix" of "That's My Impression" is their first foray into self production and "Paninaro" sees Chris triumphantly demonstrating his innate ability to write a cracking tune. By the time we hear the brilliant "Jack the Lad", "A New Life" and "Do I Have To?" it is clear Neil and Chris have entered their "imperial" phase and found it impossible to make a misstep. 

I remember reading a review of the single "So Hard" back in 1990 where the author bemoaned the fact that the b-side "It Must Be Obvious" was a wonderful song that had effectively been discarded. By including songs such as this on a compilation album it felt like Pet Shop Boys were acknowledging their legitimacy and branding them with the same guarantee of quality carried by the singles they backed. Things do drop off towards the end with "If Love Were All" and "What Keeps Mankind Alive?" dragging the score down a bit, but make no mistake this is a great record. 4/5

One record at a time: 358. Pet Shop Boys - Disco 2

*Sigh* Where do I start with "Disco 2"? You would think a remix album based upon the hugely popular album "Very" would be a winner wouldn't you? But no; "Disco 2" doesn't succeed on any level.

I knew this album was going to be a mess as soon as I bought it. Firstly, as a Pet Shop Boys fan and collector, I realised I already owned all of the music on the record (well it was a CD back then). The second issue I found was that one of the remixes was of a song not originally credited to Pet Shop Boys ("Absolutely Fabulous") and two tracks were associated with the album "Behaviour". Many songs are included more than once with "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" being represented no less than three times. 

The perfect mess is completed by a terrible continuous mix by Danny Rampling that has vinyl surface noise and some songs played at completely the wrong speed. I fully understand that Rampling needed to use traditional beat matching techniques (it was 1994 after all) but the end result sounds almost comical in places.

The remixes of this era are definitely not the highlight of the Pet Shop Boys back catalogue and the decision to include such terrors as the E Smoove mix of "Liberation", Junior Vasquez's take on "Yesterday When I Was Mad" or "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing (DJ Pierre Wild Pitch Mix)" are as alarming as they are puzzling. 1/5

One record at a time: 357. Pet Shop Boys - Relentless

"Relentless" was described by the Pet Shop Boys as a "rhythm" album and was originally released as a limited edition compact disc alongside "Very" in 1993. For many years the only way to hear these songs from vinyl was via one of 500 promo records (the one with the white sleeve that carries the cunning catalogue number DF118) but in 2023 the album was given a formal release to mark its thirtieth anniversary on both CD and yellow vinyl (black sleeve).

The story goes that these songs came about because Chris Lowe had written a series of instrumental tacks that Neil couldn't think of lyrics for. Rather than discard the music, they decided to spend a week in Sarm Studios to work the songs up and release them as an album.

Whilst "Relentless" had aspirations of appealing to the dance floor, the reality is that things don't stray too far from the traditional Pet Shop Boys formula. As much as they love dance music the boys can never shake a predilection for melody and this album retains many pop sensibilities as a result. "One Thing Leads To Another" wouldn't sound out of place on "Very" and the original version of "Forever in Love" was intended to be the b-side of "Go West". Where this record does lean more heavily towards dance music it tends incorporate a Euro-house sound which was popular in the charts, but was never likely to be played at contemporary clubs such as Cream, Fabric or Ministry of Sound. 

The one thing that does distinguish this album from some of its more mainstream pop brethren is the use of samples. Personally I find some of them very annoying with "We Came From Outer Space" almost driving me crazy with repetition. For many years I found it impossible to discern what the female vocalist was saying on "The Man Who Has Everything" and using the "Amen, Brother" break (again) seems a little lazy to twenty first century ears. Yet I loved this record in 1993. Maybe it just hasn't aged well. 3/5

One record at a time: 356. Pet Shop Boys - Very

I didn't pick up the LP of "Very" when it was released in 1993 as I only bought compact discs back then. Fast forward about ten years and the band's official website was selling off some old stock they had lying around so I decided to pick up a copy of "Very" on vinyl to fill the hole in my collection. More recently I acquired the 2018 remastered release which is pressed on 180g vinyl and sounds great.

Sometime in the late nineties I found the picture disc shown in the photo at a record shop that was closing down and got it for a bargain price. Despite being featured in the retrospective book "Catalogue", this isn't a legitimate release and like most bootlegs, it doesn't sound all that great. 

The Colombian version with the unique sleeve was an eBay purchase from about 2004 and turned into a major headache when I realised the seller only accepted payment in Colombian pesos via Western Union. Until recently I wasn't really clear on why this version had a different sleeve, but the BBC documentary "Imagine: Then and Now" helped me come up with a theory. 

When looking at the European LP of "Very" Chris says, "We don't like this. It looks like an inner sleeve doesn't it?" To which Neil replies, "You know why? It is an inner sleeve". As the inner of the final LP is the same as the photo used on the Colombian version, I think Neil and Chris simply decided to swap the designs of the inner and outer sleeve. However, the branch of EMI in Colombia either didn't get the memo or they figured they were so remote they could do whatever they wanted.

The music on these records is some of the most commercial the boys have ever released as chart hits like "Go West", "Can You Forgive Her?" and "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing" testify. Yet there's no album filler here and this is one of those classic albums that justifies use of the trope "every song could be a single". If you really want me to nit pick I would say that the production on "One and One Make Five" never convinced me, I'm not keen on the song "One in a million" and "Young Offender" sounds very muddled in places. We didn't know it at the time, but this was one of pop music's last great hurrahs before Britpop came along to ruin the party. 4/5