The Pet Shop Boys note on their official site that their upcoming studio album, out in March, will be titled Yes. As mentioned previously, the first single off the Xenomania-produced set will be "Love, Etc."
Yes is quite the positive, upbeat title, no? Hopefully, after getting the Latin, moody club, musical theater, stripped-down and overproduced urges out of the Boys' collective systems, they're back to proper pop.
The Pet Shop Boys will be presented with an outstanding contribution to music award at next year's Brits, notes the BBC. In other words, it's official: I'm old.
(Thought, to be fair, the Pets are younger (Neil Tennant: 54, Chris Lowe: 49) than last year's recipient, Paul McCartney.)
"Since their first Brit Award over 20 years ago, Neil and Chris have produced a fantastic body of work with songs that truly were the soundtrack to a whole generation's lives," says Brits committee chairman Ged Doherty.
Meanwhile, stay tuned for the Grammy Nominations, where Rihanna featuring Lil Wayne is sure to be slated for this year's lifetime achievement honor.
David Archuleta's album was put of for pre-order on iTunes this week, and as an incentive, you get his cover of Robbie Williams' "Angels" if you buy now. This self-titled trash is out November 11.
And before you even ask, hell no am I getting this shit! It's highly doubtful anything as classy as "Crush" will be on there.
Speaking of which, my second Daily Beast recommendation—a review of Archuleta's "Crush"—was posted yesterday. Quite frankly, that site was under-using the term "cougar, so they're just lucky I came along.
A few other random iTunes observations:
1. Can you believe Snow Patrol (#3) and Lady GaGa's (#4) albums are currently outselling Pink (#14)?
2. So is Toby Keith!
3. The Sam Taylor-Wood/Pet Shop Boys single "I'm In Love With A German Film Star" and its remixes are available at the U.S. iTunes store.
The online music community is simply shooting glitter out every orifice over the previously mentioned "The Loving Kind," which is the Pet Shop Boys' contribution to the new Girls Aloud album. Much (all?) of the Girls' album leaked over the weekend.
The Boys also posted this information on their website today: "It is anticipated that the recording and mixing of the new Pet Shop Boys' album will be completed in November and that it will be released in March 2009. A single, probably a song co-written with Xenomania called 'Love etc.', will be released prior to the album."
Meanwhile, Neil Tennant took the above photos from inside the Xenomania studio as the Pet Shop Boys wrap up their album. It's the female and male backing singers laying down their vocal tracks.
But, what's this? On the far left of the men, it's none other than Saint Etienne's Bob Stanley!
Xenomaniahoncho Brian Higgins has collaborated with SE on several occasions, and currently in the U.K. there's a single out for the band's "Xenomania Mix" update of their 1997 track "Burnt Out Car" (originally produced by Higgins). As well, Xenomania produced "Stars Above Us" and "Lightning Strikes Twice" on Saint Etienne's last album, Tales From Turnpike Place.
The Sam Taylor-Wood cover of the Passions' "I'm In Love With A German Film Star" (produced by the Pet Shop Boys) will finally be released next week by small German indie label Kompact Records.
I first posted about this back in February—so was it worth the wait?
Below is the video, which features artist Wood decked out like Marlene Dietrich...if you watch close, she blinks!
Also, a clip of the original version from 1981 is next to it:
This is pretty hot—the Pet Shop Boys, while working with Xenomania on their new album, co-wrote a track called "The Loving Kind" that will appear on Girls Aloud's new album out next month.
Says Neil Tennant: "I love it—it's beautiful but still dancey—and there's talk of it being a single. We first got involved with Xenomania because they'd written and produced great songs for Girls Aloud like 'Biology' and 'Call The Shots'."
Says The Sun: "The team-up came about when Neil Tennant was recording in the studio next door. He popped in to say how much he loved the girls and walked out agreeing to work with them."
Damn those two! Given my love of the Boys, this may be the first time I have to seek out a Girls Aloud song.
Today marks the first day of autumn. And it was this week in 1993—15 years ago—when the Pet Shop Boys' album Very was released. In so many ways, that fall was a new beginning for me, and Very soundtracked my life then and still resonates with who I am today.
This post isn't going to be an album review or retrospective. Music is so subjective, and who's to say that what I like you'll like. All I can convey is who I was in September 1993, as a 19-year-old college sophomore who wandered into National Record Mart and bought Very on cassette.
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At that time, I was attending Butler County Community College in Pennsylvania, and applying to universities, anxious to get away to one of them the following school year. I was at the mall one week night, reading Entertainment Weekly at B. Dalton Books, and caught a review of Very, unaware that Pet Shop Boys had anything new out. I hurried down to NRM and bought it right away.
The place I most wanted to transfer to was Point Park College, a liberal arts school in downtown Pittsburgh with a journalism program I hoped to get into. I toured the "campus"—two high-rise buildings with a connecting pedestrian bridge that stretched over the city street below–that October, and eventually got accepted. But in the end, the school proved to be more expensive than what my student loans would cover.
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While driving around my suburban hometown in my 1987 Dodge Shadow one night with my friend Becky in fall 1993, she started laughing when "Liberation," the third track (and fourth single) on Very came on, because of the lyrics, "The night, the stars / A light shone through the door."
I'd written an off-color poem months prior, and had given it to her. It contained the line, "The lights, the disco ball / You're hot! Oh, wait...you're a man!" Somewhere, she heard a corrolation between the two.
At that point I was far from openly entertaining any gay notions about myself...except in trashy, shock-value poetry, apparently. Twelve years later, that brand of humor would come into play in a new medium.
That October, Becky and I went on a field trip with our Geography professor to see famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater house. I listened to Very on my headphones during the bus ride.
We also stopped off in Johnstown, which is where this photo was taken:
A week later, both of us went to see A Nightmare Before Christmas.
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Two great clips: Pet Shop Boys (in Beatles wigs) opening in Rio with "Tonight Is Forever/I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind Of Thing" in December 1994 on the "DiscoVERY" tour, and also seguing into Culture Beat's "Mr. Vain" during "One In A Million," from the same gig.
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In 1994, at Indiana University Of Pennsylvania—where I finally transferred to and got my Bachelor's degree from in 1997—everyone on my dorm room floor had Very. It was one of those essential CDs, like ABBAGold, the first Weezer album and R.E.M.Monster, that most students owned.
It wasn't long before I met a guy and finally acted on the previously-mentioned impulses that lay buried during my time in my hometown. Suddenly I kind of understood Very from a completely different angle.
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It's a funny thing that happens when you finish college; you enter the real world and find that what you'd been working so hard to get to is...lonely. And tough. When I moved to Los Angeles in 1999, I listened to Very a lot. It reminded me of good times. Innocent ones that had long gone by.
Every fall I dig that CD out. In fact, I probably play it more than any album still. It's my "if you were stranded on a desert island" disc.
Very is of its time, but has aged surprisingly well. "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind Of Thing" is just spectacular pop, though I much prefer the album version over the single mix that was done. "One And One Make Five" and "The Theatre" are amazing album tracks that could have been singles.
"Young Offender" makes my heart break to this day, and is probably my favorite Pet Shop Boys song of all time. I like to think that I was a young offender when Very came out.
How graceful your movement How bitter your scorn I've been a teenager since before you were born And I'm younger than some I've only begun
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A few facts about Very:
1. It's the Pet Shop Boys' fifth studio album.
2. In the U.K., it's the duo's only one to hit #1.
3. It reached #20 in the U.S., and has been certified gold (over 500,000 sold).
4. Neil Tennant commenting on "Go West" in the liner notes of the 2001 remastered CD: "[Chris Lowe] played [the original Village People version] to me and I said, 'This is ghastly.' I thought it was ghastly beyond belief. Awful. Anyway, Chris just carried on regardless."
5. Chris Lowe on he and Neil's image for the album promotion: "Everyone was being grungy. Everyone was just dressing in baggy jeans and T-shirt and sweatshirt, that Nirvana thing, looking ordinary. We wanted to be unique, outside of it."
6. Neil on "A Different Point Of View": "This song would have been great done by Take That... Chris never liked this song. Chris played the tune on orchestra hits, just to annoy me. And even more annoyingly, I really liked it."
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I stopped at the newsstand today to grab a copy of British mag Pop—the "'80s excess issue," with a nice six-page interview with the Pet Shop Boys. I read it at Starbucks, which is when I took the top photo.
The Pet Shop Boys note on their official site that their upcoming studio album, out in March, will be titled Yes. As mentioned previously, the first single off the Xenomania-produced set will be "Love, Etc."
