Left to their own devices they probably would!
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[4.75]
Edward Okulicz: Maybe I’m just jaded, but it seems around 15 years ago, every PSB album started to have one floaty nothing of a song that just mumbled “filler.” Now they’re releasing those songs as singles, I don’t know what to say.
[3]
Alfred Soto: At their most euphoric Tennant-Lowe have not exactly squelched their preference for the autumnal, so the declaration that “Whatever I have said or done/doesn’t matter in this chatter and hum” isn’t self-pitying. Whether the sputtering electronics serve or hobble the lyrics is a matter of taste. Me, I don’t expect men approaching their sixties to go Guetta or dubstep but you’d think these ace craftsman would remember that leavening moroseness with spirits and sequencers is as integral to their makeup as B-sides with magnificent titles. Tennant should return to his folkie roots and strum a guitar. He’s probably got an album of Tracey Thorn-esque drippy plaints in him.
[4]
Iain Mew: It’s difficult not to have the Pet Shop Boys’ position in the pop world in mind when listening to this. As a song that does everything so softly as to almost disappear, that makes it both a meditation on irrelevance and a cementing of the same. Any satirical bite is pulled so far back that it’s only in “well, quite” that it’s clear that there’s still life in there somewhere.
[5]
Anthony Easton: It is apropos that this was released during Pride, when the body fascism of twinks with very little clothing meets the toxic nostalgia of daddies with too much money. PSB finds a way of condemning both (sort of like “It’s A Sin” as an oblique commentary on the AIDS crisis)
[6]
Brad Shoup: On this, their 23rd album, Sparks aim for that audiophile ennui, crafting a mordantly funny portrait of an aging pop act half-heartedly hawking their… wait, what?
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: Forget all Pet Shop Boys’ history, and this is the most gorgeous, crystalline trip-hop update (those synths aren’t far from “Climax”) we’re likely to get in 2012. This is impossible for millions, I realize, but it’s worth a try.
[8]
Colin Small: An interesting concept with absolutely no stakes. It’s “Comfortably Numb” inverted. Instead of not sensing what’s outside, what’s outside can’t sense you. The lack of stakes may be the point: a sad serenity stretching into the distance. These two seem to enjoy being invisible way, way too much.
[2]
Jer Fairall: Now this is being boring.
[4]