If you care about pop, as I do to perhaps unhealthy degrees, than a new Pet Shop Boys album is quite possibly the most important event on your musical calendar. Since 1985, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have been feeding our addiction with intelligent, witty, sad, funny, beautiful and danceable pop songs. "Yes" is an exceptional addition to a catalogue already overflowing with unadulterated pop genius. First single and opening track "Love Etc" is slightly reminiscent of their 1996 single "Before". Light and fizzy verses are followed by a strident call and response chorus, with Neil's excellently nonchalant vocals informing us how ...  Read the complete review

To say 'they're back' would be to suggest that they were ever anywhere else. Never lacking in originality, never lacking a new song or a slightly twisted and tortured lyric, I don't think the boys ever went away (or at least not far). Their 10th studio album, 'Yes', is another on-target release. Duo Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe won an award for their 'Outstanding Contribution to Music' at the 2009 Brit Awards - so is this new album them resting on their laurels or does it have anything new to say? They've aged quite well, Tennant still has the slightly amused, knowing expression and Lowe seems to be desiccating rather than actually aging, but what of the music? ...  Read the complete review

I first heard "Yes" at a preview event hosted by Parlophone Records and Popjustice at the Institute of Contemporary Arts on 6th March 2009. An audience of about a hundred devoted "Petheads" had gathered to hear the new album played and the Pet Shop Boys interviewed. None of us knew quite what to expect. How would the famed production values of Brian Higgins and the Xenomania team interact with the Boys' deadpan style? The Boys have always exhibited a very English kind of urbane (and urban) dry and self-deprecating wit. How would the alchemy of a Kent rectory studio transmute this style into the high octane formula best known for propelling ...  Read the complete review

The pet shop boys and the smiths both have something in common. Although vastly different, they sort of convey the same english intelligence which makes them respectively, well-respected entities of pop and indie. But as marr progressed to join the cribs and Morrisey continued to progress into a racist, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe proved to get worse and worse with every album they produced. It seems that their downhill slump has ceased to continue with the release of this album. In getting themselves 'up to date', believe it or not the Pet Shop Boys actually wrote a single for Girls Aloud, and it seems there is some correlation between that and the ...  Read the complete review