[Introspective] Review: Pet Shop Boys deliver after a decade away - Daily Herald

Pdj pauldj6 at gmail.com
Mon Oct 31 03:33:22 PDT 2016


I loved reading this.

Thanks!


On 29/10/16 19:04, Don Ackerman wrote:
> Review: Pet Shop Boys deliver after a decade away
> Scott Tittrington Daily Herald  Updated Oct 24, 2016
>
> http://www.heraldextra.com/entertainment/music/reviews/review-pet-shop-boys-deliver-after-a-decade-away/article_ecf6a2b3-0d0d-598e-bbfc-f3efaf7adfa3.html
>
> When my wife and I moved from suburban Los Angeles to Utah in 2014, one of the things we most looked forward to was the opportunity to see live musical acts without having to take out a second mortgage.
>
> The greater Salt Lake area, complete with numerous top-notch live music venues, has become a hot tour stop for bands and performers, and Heidi and I have taken advantage to the tune of some 15 shows in the past 30 months.
>
> I provide that context to offer the following -- I can't speak for her, but Saturday night's performance by the Pet Shop Boys at The Complex in downtown Salt Lake City is the best concert I've seen during our time in the Beehive State.
>
> Yes, you read that correctly. The show by a group that hasn't been exactly musically relevant since I was in high school (I'm now 42), by a band visiting Salt Lake City for the first time in more than a decade, trumped several big-name popular acts performing in big-time venues that I've had the chance to see in the past 2 1/2 years.
>
> This wasn't the case of a nostalgia act looking to simply capitalize on its popularity of years gone by more than a quarter decade later. Live-music fans have had several opportunities to see such concerts this past summer -- good in their own right, but centered almost completely on radio-friendly hits from the past and offering up nothing new to reinvigorate the passion.
>
> Instead, the Pet Shop Boys -- vocalist Neil Tennant and keyboardist Chris Lowe -- released a new studio album titled "Super" in April and have literally been touring the world in support of it.
>
> Backed by three additional musicians -- two percussionists and an additional keyboardist/violinist who all dabbled in background vocals -- Tennant and Lowe played for just shy of two hours Saturday, delivering a high-energy, visually stunning performance inside Rockwell, the largest of The Complex's four separate venues that holds 2,500 patrons.
>
> Several new tracks off "Super" featured in the first half of their set compare quite favorably with the band's historic catalog, and the boys weren't shy in pulling tracks from across their discography rather than focusing solely on the hits that made them famous when they first burst on the American music scene in the late '80s.
>
> The variety was such that three of the Pet Shop Boys' biggest commercial hits -- "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)," "Suburbia," and "What Have I Done to Deserve This" -- didn't even make the cut for Saturday's show, and so strong was the effort that no one really seemed to mind.
>
> Tennant's vocals were on point the entire evening, and the energy offered up by the now 62-year-old was inspiring and impressive. Lowe's keyboard work was as strong as ever, the backing musicians more than proved their mettle, and the accompanying light show, as well as the right-sized venue, rounded out the memorable performance.
>
> Several times throughout the evening, Tennant referenced that the Pet Shop Boys had not taken the stage in Salt Lake City for more than a decade, lamenting that fact and saying it had been far too long.
>
> He's right. On Saturday night, he and his bandmates witnessed first hand a rabid fan base still enthralled by not just the synth pop hits of decades gone by, but the ones fresh out of the studio.
>
> With that in mind, it's a safe bet it won't be another decade before local fans have the chance to see the Pet Shop Boys again.
>
> ...
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