One More Chance! (Actually - Pet Shop Boys)

Member Name: EasternStar

Product:	Actually - Pet Shop Boys
Date:	09/12/08 (29 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Captures the energy, squalor and dreams of Eighties Britain

Disadvantages: Relentlessly bleak. A couple of filler tracks between the stomping hits

Welcome to London, 1987.

Two men, impeccably dressed in black tie, greet you.

A young Neil Francis Tennant, lead singer of an edgy, breakthrough dance-pop act known as the Pet Shop Boys, yawns at you from the cover of the album. It's been a late night. His fellow band-member, Christopher Sean Lowe, who is virtually unrecognisable without his trademark baseball cap and shades, looks the camera straight in the eye.

So it's a bland enough album cover with an almost self-deprecating, embarrassed, title: "Pet Shop Boys, actually". Looks can deceive. Get ready to go on a storming, energy-laden musical journey back in time.

One More Chance

A shimmering keyboard and screeching car, with an insistent percussion, opens up the album. The street scenes build into the opening scene-setter lyric: "The city is quiet, too cold to walk alone..." The sense of urgency and pain is palpable. "Someone's been talking, and I've got the blame... Change friend, you know what I mean... Push me in a corner and I'll scream!"

A biting chorus of Eighties electro-pop then greets you. This song is all about escape, freedom and the desire to run away, fleeing to New York, running away through bridges and tunnels. Why are they running away? What are they running from? This song sinks its hooks in and doesn't let go. Neil's voice is normally unflappable, deadpan - but here you can feel the current of raw emotion.

What Have I Done to Deserve This?

Beautiful interpolated harmonies here between Neil and the legendary Dusty Springfield who is the guest vocalist. The PSB lyrics are almost sublimely poetic: "You bought me drinks, you bought me flowers, I read you books, we talked for hours" and this is a melodic, pretty track. It again touches upon the pervasive themes of money, transactions and failed love that haunt so much of this album.

Shopping

This thumping track, with its repetitive and merciless disco hooks, twists the knife into 1980s consumerist culture in general and Margaret Thatcher's policy of privatisation in particular. "We're buying and selling your history...There's a big bang in the City, we're all on the make. .. I heard it in the House of Commons, everything's for sale". Like "Opportunities", it captures the spirit of the late Eighties financial boom even while skewering everything it stood for.

Rent

A controversial track because of the obvious allusion in the title, but it can surely be viewed as a heartbreaking story of economic subjugation and dependence in any relationship. Liza Minnelli, by the way, provided a fantastic cover on "Results". It reminds me of the Marxist concept of "rent", and the idea that capitalism can reduce human value to a market transaction.

The gentle synthesiser and wistful keyboard belie a sad state of affairs: "Look at my hopes, look at my dreams, the currency we spent... I love you, you pay my rent". The melody is beautiful, but the lyrics speak of tragedy.

Hit music

A slice of compelling 1980s disco synthesiser - but in my view, this has dated more than other tracks on the album. It's eminently forgettable.

It couldn't happen here

The eponymous track from the surreal Pet Shop Boys film, It Couldn't Happen Here. Perhaps it references the classic wartime occupation film of the same name; maybe it is a dirge about the spread of AIDS. To be honest, I have no idea. This song has a filmic, orchestral quality which may appeal to some. Quite honestly, I find it slow and rather tedious. Not a stand-out track on the album.

It's a sin

The climax of the album - an overblown, extravagant electro-pop romp in which Tennant (raised a Catholic) confesses all to the world. This song was of course a club smash and mainstream hit, beginning with a space shuttle countdown and ending with the penitent (or rather wilfully impenitent) Neil Tennant reciting his "Confiteor", or Catholic confession, in Latin. At first this hits you as a stunning, dramatic song but if it's over-played, it does lose its power.

I Want To Wake Up

For my money, this is another of the dragging, tedious tracks on the album with a heavy, almost industrial sound and a love triangle worthy of New Order. The Pet Shop Boys have written some of the sharpest, irony-dripping lyrics in the music business. However, "To fall in love, is it so uncool?" isn't amongst them.

Heart

Catchy, addictive, this is a slice of polished Eighties pop art that drags you in from the first sonic bursts. This sure-fire hit smashed into the charts and reached number one for three weeks in April 1988. Neil's deadpan delivery - "If I didn't love you, I would look around for someone else" - is at its finest coupled with the biting, riveting but sharply controlled synthesiser rhythms on this track. It's fantastic.

King's Cross

This track is a bleak, dystopic vision of urban (and moral) decay. It acquired a new poignancy after the King's Cross tube station fire later that year. "You wake up in the morning and there's still no guarantee..." Coming after the synthesiser adrenalin rush of some of the earlier tracks, this is a depressing and suitably miserabilist finale to the album.

"Actually" sold over four million copies and is the Pet Shop Boys' second highest selling album of all time. You can also buy the Enhanced Limited Edition with a second disc and ton of extra tracks but my review has focused on the original edition line-up (priced at £1.87 used and new on Amazon). Sorry.

Twenty-one years later, "Actually" holds its own as a faithful portrait of the age, capturing the squalor, sudden wealth and broken dreams of Eighties Britain. This album showcases the Pet Shop Boys at a time when they were most contemporary, urgent and abrasive. Buying "Actually" is a form of musical time travel. Enjoy the journey.

(c) Paul/EasternStar 2008

Summary: Welcome to 1987. Make yourselves at home.