I am thirty-nine years old. My introduction to most of my favourite bands was my fifteen-year-senior older brother, who would return from Birmingham University and beyond with an eclectic collection of vinyl, cassettes, and, soon after, gasp, compact discs. I distinctly remember first hearing Radiohead, The Cure, The Smiths… and those two weirdos who wore traffic cones on their heads. I must have been four or five, in our old front room, on the charmingly 1980s brown sofa, when I first heard that orchestral, atmospheric fade in, the synthesizer beeps and bops, Lowe’s staccato keyboard beats, the hollow cowbell, and the charmingly simple, distinctly queer rap of Tennant. It left an impression on my soft, lumpy, dullard of a child’s brain, imagery of riding on the London underground while being lectured on class disparity by a man with a damn traffic cone on his head burnt into my mind.
I didn’t think that could happen a second time, he cheekily wrote, signaling the relevant review of The Pet Shop Boys 2024 album, Nonetheless.
I’m no Pet Shop Boys expert. I’m certainly a fan, a defender of the synthpop legends. Last year I discussed that first incident in my brother’s car, speeding from Cardiff to Birmingham, and he was adamant he’d never been into that “queer electronica stuff”. I brought up his love of New Order, and we laughed and just carried on doing what we do.
“Just carrying on doing what we do”, by a strained coincidence, might be an unfavourable way of describing the Pet Shop Boys’ 2000s output. Good, some real bangers even, but kinda just going with the motions after fifteen years of riding high as pop royalty. What Lowe and Tennant needed, it seems, was a little shakeup.
That shakeup, unsurprisingly, was the 2020 coronavirus lockdown. Surprise. Tennant has described the loneliness and isolation of the lockdown as a major motivator, leading him to experiment with software like Garage Band. With necessity and limitation comes experimentation and creativity. And here we have Nonetheless, an album that, in Tennant and Lowe’s words, is a celebration of human diversity, an indicator of where the band is now, rather than then.
And it’s ruddy good.
I haven’t ever previously felt like I did when I first slapped play on Nonetheless, when listening to any other brand new album for the first time. In many ways, it feels like a strange piece of time-defying archaeology, a classic Pet Shop Boys album from the era of Please and Actually, but with today’s technology, wisdom, and sensibilities. A secret album made and forgotten, but now in my greasy, sweaty hands.
The opening three tracks, Loneliness, Feel, and Why Am I Dancing, brought me back to the lockdown, isolated and confused. Able to express but not be heard or felt. The guilt and second-guessing of enjoying yourself and your time while chains of distance and concern bind all the world.
The centre of the album, Dancing Star to The Schlager Hit Parade, makes me think of the establishments that brought the Pet Shop Boys their fame: raves, the London club scene, and the underground dance movements of the 1980s. It is a celebration of the energy and life generated by gatherings and the happiness that being together brings. Exactly what we were denied during those dismal two years of worrying and six-feet-separation. Dancing Star easily conjures images of a Top of the Pops performance that never was, complete with dutch-angle zooms on Lowe humourlessly-miming mixing, as I believe youth has never said, fat beats. Queer undertones pervade, especially in A New Bohemia, but nowhere near as strong as they do at the album’s tail end.
And so the album ends with the big band kitsch sound of The Secret of Happiness, the cold but high-energy Bullet for Narcissus, and the decidedly slow and threatening Love is the Law. With the tongue-in-cheek commentary on the “banality of mainstream” and the straight-up Aleister Crowley quote, there is certainly a part of me, the near-middle-aged queer outsider, that feels like this album was made for me. By coincidence, as I listened to Love is Law, eyes closed, images of the work of longtime Pet Shop Boys collaborator Derek Jarman trailed across my soft, pliable mind; the queer splendour and cold remoteness conjured by Tennant’s calculated delivery and Lowe’s purposeful orchestration.
If anything is going to sell you on Nonetheless, it is New London Boy, which in many ways feels like an alternate universe version of West End Girls. A question of identity and place in a burgeoning queer movement, or perhaps simply an expression of queer celebration. Beats flash like fairy lights, Tennant speak-sings for punctuation… and then he raps.
Neil Tenannt raps again, for me, just for me, name-dropping Bowie and Roxy Music as an allusion to the consideration of sexuality teamed with musical interest.
And suddenly, I’m there again.
I’m five years old.
On the London Underground of my mind.
And the man in the traffic cone hat is lecturing me on queer acceptance.
And he’s rapping.
I’m five years old.
And I’m ruddy happy.