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CD Review by John Demetry
"Play the sad songs / Sing the blues / You don't fall in love by chance /
You choose"
So ends the new Pet Shop Boys album, Release. That last track, "You Choose", is a typically pristine conclusion. It represents the distinctly gay perspective on art ("Play the sad songs / Sing the blues") and romance ("You don't fall in love by chance / You choose") that the rest of Release extends into an enveloping, erudite worldview. In many ways, Release is a "blues" album. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe locate personal pain and communicate it in their idiosyncratic language. Release places that voice amidst exquisite bass-lines, electronica, and guitar hooks. Johnny Marr is featured on guitar in seven of the Release tracks. The collaboration between the Pets and Marr marks an auspicious event. Marr was the former co-songwriter of The Smiths, the great '80s band that queered rock-'n-roll history. Marr -- whose guitar riffs repeated and responded to Morrissey's call "I am human and I need to be loved" on the sublime "How Soon Is Now?" -- brings his avant-pop-rock scrutiny to the Pets' sophisticated pop investigations.
The sound reminds of their slower songs of the past: the pang of young sexual experience in "Nervous" from "Behavior" or the pain of adult gay romantic rituals in "To Speak Is a Sin" from "Very". An atypical pop catalogue, Release confronts romantic disappointment and possibility. In "I Get Along," Tennant gooses pop cliché with his ambivalent vocalizations. The repetition of the chorus ("I get along, get along / without you very well / I get along very well") seems both defiant and neurotic. Those cheeky Pets make a joke on how pop ubiquity mirrors romantic delusion. This neuroticism is even more explicit in the wrenching "Love Is a Catastrophe": "No concentration / just rerunning conversation / Trying to understand / how I fell into this quicksand." Check out how Marr's guitar bridge empathizes with and challenges Tennant's call: "Never been lonelier in my life." Such ambiguity -- such art -- reveals itself as knowledge earned from the travails of gay love. Release also features happier and hopeful songs like the refreshingly mature "Home and Dry" and the up-to-date "E-mail." They exhibit the hard work -- the imagination -- needed to climb out of love's quicksand.
"Home and Dry" is probably the first single ever released about a
middle-aged, domestic gay male couple. It's a delightful track -- and it's
about time!
The trance beat of "The Samurai in Autumn" tackles the age issue head-on. "It's not as easy as it was / or as difficult as it could be / for the Samurai in autumn," repeats the haiku on the state of the Pets' art. With the imperial effortlessness and maturity of its gently grooving soundscape, "The Samurai in Autumn" essays the still-expanding aesthetic of the Pet Shop Boys. On Release the Pets again apply the political and personal experience of gay love to wider sociological concerns with "London" -- the wit and up-tempo diversity of which bests jangle-pop artists like Natalie Merchant. "Birthday Boy" goes even further. It reveals the album's title, Release, as a sexual-cum-spiritual metaphor. The gay tales of Release promise universal, revelatory catharsis. Two tracks completely fulfill that promise: "The Night I Fell In Love" and "Here." They're the greatest, most powerful Pets songs since "Dreaming of the Queen" and "Go West" on 1993's "Very" tackled the cultural/spiritual repercussions of AIDS. "The Night I Fell In Love" and "Here" show these two samurai kicking ass -- upping-the-ante on Queer art and all pop expression in the autumn of their careers. Both tracks explore and deepen the relationship of pop artist to audience. That's most obvious in "The Night I Fell In Love." It's about a young, gay fan and his one-night affair with Eminem, the rap artist often accused of homophobia, misogyny, and general irresponsibility. The song goes beyond mere delicious topicality and tabloid juiciness -- peeking into the Hip Hop closet -- to be a most ingenious response to Eminem. "The Night I Fell In Love" is the Pets' most infectious, ear-to-ear grin-inducing dramatization of an adolescent gay crush. Listen to how they make these lyrics rhyme(!): "He had a video camera / I was so nervous / I had to try hard not to stammer." The Pets' graciousness to Eminem is equally amazing -- an extension of the self-discovery embarked upon by the song's protagonist.
"And if you ever feel / the pain is far too big a deal / I say with pride / I'll be on your side." For the Pets, "pride" is more than a slogan. Whatever the fads, "Here" recognizes everyone's pop dreams: "You've got a home here / Call it what you want / You've got a home here." Release feels like home to me. |
The Pets step away from the synth-dance milieu that once defined both their
art and their homo-cult club audience. The songs on Release -- like the
flower album art -- form a lovely, melancholy pop bouquet.
