[Introspective] Pet Shop Boys effort well-made, not fabulous By The Philadelphia Inqui rer Feb 22, 2020

[Don Ackerman]

Fair review. 

Pet Shop Boys effort well-made, not fabulous
By The Philadelphia Inquirer  Feb 22, 2020 

Pet Shop Boys; “Hotspot” (X2 ***):
Pet Shop Boys have been a thinking-person’s dance band for 3½ decades now, with silent and stone-faced beat-maker Chris Lowe leading the way to the disco while ambivalent wordsmith Neil Tennant drolly calculates the emotional cost of loving the nightlife, baby.
“Hotspot” is not a flat-out fabulous Pet Shop Boys record in the vein of such previous one-word-title career linchpins as 1987’s “Actually” or 1993’s “Very.” But that would be a little too much to expect at this late stage, with both Pets now in their seventh decade. Recorded in Berlin with producer Stuart Price — a Madonna collaborator who previously worked with the Pets — “Hotspot” works best when it plays it cool.

The straight-up party starter “Monkey Business” is silly and lightweight to a fault, Tennant at his least clever. And while “Wedding In Berlin” is a smart business move, a ready-made all-inclusive wedding anthem for celebrants both gay and straight, it’s also not terribly imaginative: “We’re getting married, married, married” is not the most creative lyric from Tennant, the former Smash Hits music critic.

But the winners on this well-made album are the songs that ponder longing and loneliness and whether it’s worth summoning the energy to head out for another night at the club.

“Happy People” captures “that feeling of epic grandeur at the end of a summer’s day/ That sense of so much missing, when the world gets in the way.” And “Burning the Heather,” which has been interpreted as Tennant mulling whether or not there’s a place for the Pets in post-Brexit England, conjures a lovely autumnal energy as he plays it coy about risking a romantic connection: “Seasons are changing, time’s moving along/ Give me a drink and I’ll be gone.” — Dan DeLuca

https://www.leadertelegram.com/ap/entertainment/pet-shop-boys-effort-well-made-not-fabulous/article_2494ad64-78f4-5d29-b683-79213debe8e4.html


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