How Pet Shop Boys, Actually nailed pop music in 1987. .

Yes, it's 36 years old..

When pressed to name their finest moment Neil Tennant has plenty of options. There’s Chris Lowe throwing fried breakfast over Barbara Windsor in a seaside guest house, there’s playing live shows whilst appearing not to, and writing a song called You only tell me you love me when you’re drunk in 2000, there’s working with Dusty Springfield, Liza Minnelli and Ian Wright within three years, and there’s making at least three cover versions (Always on my mind, It’s alright and Go West their own. However, their greatest feat is probably managing to sleep during 1986 while promoting debut album Please knowing they still had It’s a sin, Jealousy, Rent and the majestic evergreen What have I done to deserve this? waiting in the wings for their second album.

Yes, the one with the yawning cover is 36 years old, and it’s hard to imagine another band playing so riskily into the hands of critics’ accusations of them being boring (;-) and that all their songs sound the same. Since then, they’ve become national treasures – which it’s easy to imagine Lowe baulking at, whilst quietly enjoying himself – but they were once seen by some as single finger riff pop upstarts, as if that’s even a bad thing. Of course fans saw something quite different: the romanticism of thwarted love and the tentative steps in becoming who you are.

Second albums are notoriously challenging, as band members pat empty pockets for new songs and find nothing but nameless phone numbers and crumpled bar receipts. Typically, Pet Shop Boys (it’s easy to talk in unused PSB album titles) made it look easy. Please had a cohesive arch of decadent urban escape and eventual domesticity, but Actually seemingly found top ten and number one singles down the back of their sofa, for what was a victory lap. They even had the thunderous Always on my mind single annotated with ‘Not on the album, Actually.’ That was followed up with another number one in the shape of Heart that was intended for Madonna and called time on their imperial phase. This album is their coliseum, their festival of Britain and probably their best album, even if it isn’t necessarily fans’ favourite.

It starts with the extended mix of a very early single, re-recorded and possibly intended for lead single, but One more chance had an eye on the gritty recent past of Camden demos and italo-disco 12”s that is hard to square off with the rampant ambition of It’s a sin, which announced the album to the world with all the subtlety of pressing the big red button at NASA. This comeback single built on Suburbia’s no.8 nine months earlier with their second no.1. What have I done to deserve this? soared to no.2 with an unexpected organic soul, while Rent crunched through its gears of electro-pop before a glide-out on the seductive whisper of ‘it’s easy, it’s so easy…’ that encapsulates the gestation of the album.    

Actually cemented Neil and Chris as the arch, ironic and possibly aloof pop stars that Tennant’s erudite lyrics have probably contributed to them never quite shaking off. That they had the sumptuous, fragile yet hopeful A new life, I want a dog and I get excited (you get excited too) to burn through as B-sides demonstrated a prowess that probably caused as much Jealousy (which had to wait until 1990’s Behaviour to see the light) as it did respect. While Hit music collides soundtrack atmosphere with Duane Eddie’s Peter Gunn it might not be missed; mind you its meandering and uncharacteristic coda sinks luxuriously into the reflective blues of lone feet on busy city streets that early PSB mined so effectively. Kings Cross is one of their last great London songs, but possibly the finest, with their producer muse Stephen Hague confidently at the helm.

Actually was the moment that Pet Shop Boys’ Midas touch dovetailed with a public appetite for intelligently wistful pop music that masqueraded as highbrow and ironic. The grand orchestration of It couldn’t happen here via assistance from Ennio Morricone and Angelo Badalamenti may have provided their flop film its name, but, written while a good friend passed away in hospital, is is simultaneously as blunt and stately as a song can be. The album’s mood is far detached, but it’s how Tennant has always preferred to land his lyrical blows; via metaphor, third person and filmic asides. Actually remains their North star.    

Now it almost seems incredible
We've laughed too loud and woke up everyone
I may be wrong, but I thought we said
it couldn’t happen here

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