Of course, I was going to write about the Pet Shop Boys! EQ is primarily an electronic-pop music blog after all. The single “Dreamland” (collaboration with Olly Alexander of Years & Years) dropped last year, and I had hoped at the time, one of the PSB super, fantastic music videos would follow on. DANG!, this didn’t happen, and we had to settle for a pretty unimpressive lyric video instead. The sophomore release of “Burning The Heather” faired no better. I so very much really, really craved a proper music video from the legendary synth-pop duo (they are usually very, very good at music videos, you know.) You could say, what PSB was giving out wasn’t hitting the hotspot with me. To be honest I was becoming fearful of how the new album “Hotspot” (they’re fourteenth,) would pan out. But I kept telling myself this is Pet Shop Boys, they know what they are doing. It will turn out good in the end.
They bided their time for sure, but have to say I’ve been absolutely loving “Hotspot,” the album really works as a full body of work the best. To PSB and Stuart Price’s (producer) credit more so, than most other albums tend to do in the current music climate. In fact, on this occasion, I’m preferring to go the whole hog, luxuriating in the full unadulterated synthy splendour of the complete “Hotspot” experience than get a quick PSB fix from listening to any, one track alone. That being said, the latest cheeky single “Monkey Business” is proper old school disco and did receive the music video treatment it deserves. Embraces individuality, character, flamboyance breaking away from the norm et al. Hurrah!
It’s is a shame that we don’t have programmes like TOTP around now, that said the BEEB tried with “Sounds Like Friday Night” it didn’t take-off, massively though. By mentioning this, I was attempting to make the point, Neil and Chris gave great performances when on the show. During the past eighteen months, The BBC’s flagship, topical, daily, night-time, magazine programme The One Show has stepped into the breach, featuring music artists, to satisfy the BBC televisions quota of live music on TV (alongside “Later… with Jools Holland.”) Pet Shop Boys graced the BBC Media Village courtyard on Friday and almost, replicated the “Monkey Business” video with what appeared to be majority of the cast from the promo clip. Claiming the spot as my favourite live music moment on UK TV, of 2020 thus far.
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