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Of all the Pet Shop Boys' "Disco" albums, Disco 3 is the most welcome.
Their last album, the wonderful Release, featured a different sound for
the group: mellower, blues-ier, guitar-driven. The "Disco" discs,
collections of new and remixed dance songs, are heavy with a decidedly
techno, rather than pop, bent.
The most moving song on Release was the ode to gay families, "Here," in which Tennant invited his audience into his home (though the richest songs have since proven to be "Birthday Boy" and "London"). On the original "Here," a simple bass beat was surrounded by an embracing soundscape of synth swirls and a holy chorus. The Pets' melancholy, utterly devastating, sound played up bittersweet irony: "We all have a dream of a place we belong / . . . / But sometimes we don't notice when the dream has come true." Has any song ever cried out more for a dance remix? This dream comes true on "Disco 3". The techno introduction to "Here (PSB new extended mix)" overlays one beat track after another, establishing the song's foundations. While the Release version presented "home" as welcoming bedrock, granted often a painfully elusive one, the Disco 3 remix of "Home" offers the dancefloor pleasure of creating one's own home, one's own place in the sound space. Choose your beats - and move! The remix of "Here" connects to the dazzling dance version of "Home and dry (Blank and Jones remix)": re-defining "home" as a domestic relationship between two men. The synthesized whisper in the Release version of "Home and Dry"- "We're going home" - now becomes the introduction to the dance mix's killer - killer! - reconfiguration of the song's essential beats: an existential challenge turned into a euphoric rave-up. The song's "we" re-imagines "home" as a space for infinite dance responses. The Pets do something different than only creating gay pop that introduces straights to gay emotions and, finally, gives gays a pop home of their own. They often utilize their razor sharp wit to scrutinize gay culture. "The only crime is irrelevance," sings Tennant on the wicked "If looks could kill." A been-there-done-that pop tune about the failure to overcome romantic heartbreak, it cuts deep into nightclub self-absorption. "Sexy Northerner (Superchumbo mix)" doesn't have the hilariously rousing "They're not all football fags!" cheer that helped make the original a satirical blast. The remix's restriction to the refrain "How does he do it?" suggests neurotic shallowness even as the song entices listeners to perform their own sexy strut. The Disco 3 Neil-Tennant sung version of "Positive Role Model" (originally the climactic song from their brilliant musical soundtrack "Closer to Heaven"), decries "Advocate"-style hypocrisy and conveys disappointment in gay culture's failure to live up to the promise of AIDS-era (note the triple-meaning of the word "positive") activism and philosophy. The new lyrics are stinging: "So much for making it day by day / Back on everything / Instead of taking it another way / We're back on everything." Get into the groove: the Pets musically breakdown the phrase "positive role model" and its multi-significance to gay culture - as capitulation to het values or as individual fulfillment.
The Pets teach by example. They take the gorgeously plaintive "London" - about the experience of refugees in England - from Release and deconstruct it on two tracks. The first redux, "London (Thee Radikal Blaklite Edit)," restricts the vocals to the synthesizer background from the original, while elongating and embroidering that song's sudden upbeat tempo. It's the musical equivalent of the song proper's refrain: "Let's do it - let's break the law!" Meanwhile closing track "London (Genuine Piano mix)" singles out one of Tennant's most expressive vocals against a piano orchestration of the song. Tennant's halting enunciations - "Te-ell it li-ike it i-is" - are as analytical as the techno mix's polythrythms. While the polyrhythms challenge the audience to move to unexpected - outsider - beats, Tennant's vocals illustrate the beauty of such understanding. The greatness of "London" is its amazing examination of a specific political circumstance from numerous (musical and ideological) perspectives. Thus, the three independent yet interconnected versions convey an incredible worldview. No song on Disco 3 better conveys that expansive vision than "Try it (I'm in love with a married man)." The Pets cover the Bobby Orlando-scribed song originally performed by the girl duo Oh Romeo. By turning the character of "the other woman" into "the other man," Tennant acts out the dual consciousness of gay experience in a hetero society - and expands that insight to include women and men (gay, straight and on the d.l.). He sings: "Do you think about me, darling / When you make love to your wife? / . / Are you lonely when you're with her? / Do you ever long for me?" That dual consciousness is acted out as domestic fantasy. The song doubles every expression of longing: equally humorous and touching. Each beat on Disco 3 resonates with such complexity of emotions. To dance is liberation. |
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The Pets open Disco 3 with a necessary primer on social-aesthetic theory,
the new song "Time on my hands." The song addresses the dangers of leisure
time - having too much time on your hands - by equating this contemporary
concern with the music artist's work in a temporal medium. Disco 3 gives
idle minds (and feet) plenty of good, fun, imaginative work.