February 2020 - Music
Album of the Month - Hotspot By Pet Shop Boys
On their 14th studio album, the best-selling duo in UK pop dampen the euphoria; the result is a tuneful, wan album that lands somewhere in the middle of their rich catalogue. or more than 35 years, Pet Shop Boys singer-keyboardist Neil Tennant has returned to a question of world-historic import: Do I stay in or do I go out? “Turn on the news, drink some tea/Maybe if you’re with me we’ll do some shopping” goes one couplet in 1988’s “Left to My Own Devices.” Observing a teen on “I Don’t Wanna,” a song from Pet Shop Boys’ 14th studio album Hotspot, Tennant sings with his usual starchy plaintiveness, “Feels so shy/He’d rather sit alone and cry/But no one understands this guy."
Hotspot observes Pet Shop Boys’ pattern of following up a pair of bangers (2015’s Super and 2013’s Electric) with a bagful of autumn leaves. The mid-tempo tunes keep their top buttons buttoned, muted and wary like the sixty-somethings Tennant and Lowe have become. No dictate requires late middle-age to be as fraught as adolescence, but Hotspot puts Lowe’s orchestral synth chords and house keyboard patterns in the service of rote tales of resignation, whose resonance may be dependent on the affection of their listening base. “Only the Dark,” a shimmering ballad in which Tennant pledges fidelity so long as the lights are out, is better. It’s not the first time he and Lowe have preferred the erotic possibilities of the unseen—a longstanding fascination which speaks to how profoundly Pet Shop Boys revel in paradox as a first principle. So much uncertainty requires consistency.
On their 14th studio album, the best-selling duo in UK pop dampen the euphoria; the result is a tuneful, wan album that lands somewhere in the middle of their rich catalogue. or more than 35 years, Pet Shop Boys singer-keyboardist Neil Tennant has returned to a question of world-historic import: Do I stay in or do I go out? “Turn on the news, drink some tea/Maybe if you’re with me we’ll do some shopping” goes one couplet in 1988’s “Left to My Own Devices.” Observing a teen on “I Don’t Wanna,” a song from Pet Shop Boys’ 14th studio album Hotspot, Tennant sings with his usual starchy plaintiveness, “Feels so shy/He’d rather sit alone and cry/But no one understands this guy."
Hotspot observes Pet Shop Boys’ pattern of following up a pair of bangers (2015’s Super and 2013’s Electric) with a bagful of autumn leaves. The mid-tempo tunes keep their top buttons buttoned, muted and wary like the sixty-somethings Tennant and Lowe have become. No dictate requires late middle-age to be as fraught as adolescence, but Hotspot puts Lowe’s orchestral synth chords and house keyboard patterns in the service of rote tales of resignation, whose resonance may be dependent on the affection of their listening base. “Only the Dark,” a shimmering ballad in which Tennant pledges fidelity so long as the lights are out, is better. It’s not the first time he and Lowe have preferred the erotic possibilities of the unseen—a longstanding fascination which speaks to how profoundly Pet Shop Boys revel in paradox as a first principle. So much uncertainty requires consistency.
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