Pet Shop Boys

They’re out of time, and that means they could be timeless. Yet, despite several number ones, and about 40 hit singles, it still feels as if the Pet Shop Boys don’t quite fit in with whatever’s happening right now in the outside world, and haven’t done for years. However, inside the Brighton Centre, it’s a completely different story.

On a wet, windy Monday evening in a tacky, dying seaside town, the Pet Shop Boys play one of the inaugural dates on their latest tour. Despite an album that has generally been rubbished by fans and critics as an ill-advised detour into the world of ‘rock‘, the **Pet Shop Boys still know what made them good, different, special even. Even if their most recent album hasn’t shown much of it.

This is evidenced in a set that mercifully skips the many low points of their latest, dull album and concentrates on presenting their ‘greatest hits’ in a way that makes you think that if God had invented a retro-camp-disco-rock hybrid, this is exactly what it would sound like -

Great big fabulous witty songs about everything that seems vitally important yet at the same time absolutely meaningless ...... about growing old, about being safe in the arms of your lover, about dreaming for a better day, about loves lost and found, about the hope we once had, and the hopes that time has destroyed. All wrapped up in something that sounds like a sleek crossbreed between dated but compelling disco, and a sleek, funky rock beast.

If you know their history, you won’t be disappointed: “Being Boring”, “West End Girls,”, “It’s A Sin”, “Left To My Own Devices”, “Domino Dancing”, “Always On My Mind”, “Go West”, “West End Girls,” “Where The Streets Have No Name”, and a supremely chunky “Love Comes Quickly” all sound tonight like the kind of songs that Elvis himself would’ve sacrificed a lifetime of burgers for. That is, they sound both timeless, yet completely relevant to a damp Monday by the seaside. In the brief minutes the songs exist, they sound as if nothing in the world could sound better.

Of course, the Pet Shop Boys are supremely dated, trapped forever by public perception in a bubble that is forever at least a decade ago - but whatever year they are perpetually stuck in whenever you go back there, it sounds great. Whilst for the time being they may appear to be at least slightly lost in the musical wilderness and their current album is a blip on their otherwise impressive track history, they are one of Britain’s premiere musical institutions with a glorious past.

If you ever need a reminder of how great, how intelligent, and how irresistible pop music can be, well, you’ve found your destination. Absolutely fabulous, indeed.