Pet Shop Boys - 'Love Etc.'
Between Horne and Corden's lacklustre presenting job, Katy Perry inexplicably winning Best International Female and Duffy walking off with pretty much everything else (I'm no Duffy detractor, but you've got to admit it did rob the evening of any suspense after a while), this year's Brit awards were a bit of a washout.
Or at least they would've been if not for that one glorious moment at the end in which the Pet Shop Boys were given the Lifetime Achievement award and celebrated with a typically avant garde performance that left us thinking that pop music can still be surprising and exciting, even in a world that attempts to legitimise Katy Perry's existence.
(. Spacehoppers!)
Creative types in all performance-related industries often joke that awards like that are little more than a sign that it's time to retire, and sometimes they are right. Fortunately, the Pet Shop Boys have never really been the sort of group to bow to expectation, and this is no exception.
This track - the launch single for new album 'Yes' - was co-written with Xenomania, and sounds pretty much how you'd expect a meshing of the Pet Shop Boys and Xenomania to sound, which is to say unlike their individual works but still familiar in that it takes the best of both and combines it into one rather brilliant whole. And if that sounds confusing, just imagine how I felt trying to describe it.
It's not a massive digression from the approach that the Pet Shop Boys are famous for - it sounds modern and timeless all at once, and Neil Tennant's beautifully clipped vocals are as quietly heartbreaking as they always are. There's something very alienating about the song, handled with typical irony as the chorus has an anthemic structure that would earn the adjective 'rousing' in anyone else's hands, but that wouldn't be the right word here at all.
So, to summarise: it's different, but it's the same. It's retro, but it's modern. It's stirring, but distant. It's a very confusing listen and that is precisely what I love about it.
Download: Out now
CD Released: March 16th
(Steve Perkins)
Comment number 1.
At 12th Mar 2009, -RachelS- wrote:It's a great song I think - they do understatement so well!
It's sad the way it's hopeful but world-weary at the same time. 'Too much of anything is never enough.' But 'I believe that we can achieve the love that we need.' Yep.
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Comment number 2.
At 13th Mar 2009, spirit wrote:EXCELLENT REVIEW FRASER...... LOVE ETC IS A GREAT SONG !!!! THAT WAS A SUPERB BRITS PERFORMANCE !!!!!!
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Comment number 3.
At 13th Mar 2009, catman231 wrote:I'd never really heard of the pet shop boys and was suitably impressed by their performance until Lady Gaga came on and SLAUGHTERED THE VOCALS! I mean, Brandon Flowers held his own but she was just atrocious.
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