Caught in the Carousel

Pet Shop Boys

Yes
Astralwerks

Pet Shop Boys

Check in with us in a year or so and see if Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have forgiven Kate Bush yet. Because, in absence of the long-rumored new Roxy Music release (yes, the one with Eno), only Kate Bush's astonishing 2005 comeback, Aerial, is a better album this decade than the newest Pet Shop Boys masterpiece. Yes has that rich electronic sound that was so often done so badly in the 1980's that it left a permanent stigma on the sound of that decade. But when done right the sound is uplifting, almost spiritual.

Yes is well-nigh miraculous. This album comes over for a visit on the first listening and by the second listening you immediately want to know what it has planned for Saturday night. Actually, just listened to it a third time, what are you doing for the whole weekend? By the fourth listening you've gone to the hardware store to make a copy of the keys to your place because you think, maybe... Fifth listening you hand the keys over. Anytime; you don't even have to call. After ten listens, the album has moved in. You don't care the cost, you'll pay every bill. But the great news is—the fantastic news is—that with astonishingly poppy confections like "All Over the World," "More Than A Dream," and "The Way It Used to Be," this album loves you back. And those aren't even the standout tracks!

And what a welcome return to form for the Pet Shop Boys after three sub par releases: Night Life, Release and 2006's dismal Fundamental (an album that had convinced me it was time for the Boys to call it a career). Those albums would be stellar offerings by most other pop groups, but by Pet Shop Boys' standards they suffered from a seeming desire to succeed in market-studied demographics. Their only saving grace, it seemed is that at least they hadn't made embarrassing career moves. And clearly, they still don't. They don't appear to have dyed their gray hair, or lifted their faces; they aren't filling albums with tracks produced by Timbaland or Jay-Z. They haven't shamelessly aimed for sales by embracing Eminem, a la Elton John. In fact, one of the highlights of 2002's Release is "The Night I Fell In Love," Neil's tale of a one-night stand with Mr. Mathers (an all-nighter with a videocam, no less): "Next morning we woke/He couldn't have been a nicer bloke/Over breakfast made jokes/About Dre and his homies and folks." The entire song is a smackdown to Eminem by a much, much smarter lyricist.

Of the more daring moves in modern pop music was the Pet Shop Boys' 1993 album Very. In the heart of the grunge era, they gave us a slick, slick, slick disco album of brilliant pop songs with the sharp lyrical insight we have come to expect from Tennant. The album culminated with a version of "Go West" that is at once more flamboyant than the Village People version, and—complete with a male chorus that is both Soviet Army and Castro Street—also one of the more heartbreaking moments in music. While much of America was flannelled, unshaven, Stone Temple Piloted and Pearl Jammed in Nirvana, Very made it onto just about every single Best of the Year album list.

The Pet Shop Boys have, in fact, been lauded for over twenty years for their exquisite arrangements and their willingness to be complete supplicants to melody. But, and here is where it matters most for me, in truth, the brilliance of the Pet Shop Boys is in their lyrics. Leonard Cohen is the only, yes, the only lyricist who can outpen Tennant. If you want to invite Lennon, Dylan, Waits, Bowie, Ferry, Simon, Hynde, McCartney, Mitchell, Springsteen, Bono or any other, be my guest, but they will be present for table scraps only. Sorry, but there you have it. Not only can Tennant turn a smart lyric on its head, he has the gift of prophecy that all great artists have. In "My October Symphony" from 1990's Behavior, Tennant elegantly questioned how much celebration would really be in order upon the imminent dismantling of the Soviet Union. Marauding underground mafias, the explosion of xenophobia and terrorism are just some of the cancers that have blossomed where Communism once held them in check.

Throughout Yes, one has the feeling that never has an album better fit the times. The opening track, "Love, etc." (a song so bouncy it should come with its own crash helmet) taps into the refrain we have heard ad nauseum the past six months, i.e. everyone is responsible to for the economic mess because we all wanted too, too much: "Don't have to be a big bucks Hollywood star/Don't have to drive a super car to get far/Don't have to live a life of power and wealth/Don't have to be beautiful but it helps/Don't have to buy a house in Beverly Hills/Don't have to have your daddy paying the bills . . . you need more you need more you need more...too much of anything is never enough."

Two tracks later "Beautiful People" taps into the global obsession with not only living vicariously through celebrities, but, worse, the notion that everyone is entitled to that lifestyle now that reality stars occupy as much space on the tabloids as the real stars. The subtext here is the amount of money and wasted hours spent in trying to get that sort of life. Later in the album, the supple "King of Rome," also aches, but the impending bankruptcy is of the heart. And here Tennant, never known as a great vocalist, shows just how smart he is. He moves us by riding the curl of a melody and allowing the swell in the music and the lovely lyric to move the listener: "Across the sky the change of time/Last night I lost a day/I'm here and there/Away from Mandalay/And if I were the King of Rome/I couldn't be more tragic/My fate to roam so far from home."

Some great albums overcome weak tracks. "Pandemonium" and "Building a Wall" are not paying rent on this album. They're friends of friends who got them in. The way to overcome weak tracks on an otherwise strong album is to end well. It's said that pure heroin is too good: your heart couldn't take it. Thank god Tennant makes the slight error of singing in French for all of twelve seconds in the closing track, "Legacy," because had he not, this might have been pure musical heroin. This mournful, almost incantatory song can at once be aimed at Blair or Bush, but it is so universal as to indict every listener. This is achieved with informed references to Hurricane Katrina, the Iraq fiasco, the use of technology to allow governments to spy on their own citizenry who, in the end, far more concerned with upgrading their cellphones, allow it. "The bourgeoisie will get over it," Tennant sings at song's end. "Look at me, I'm so over it/And you, you'll get over it/You do, you get over it in time."

Yes is not only a great album, it may very well be the finest work ever done by the finest pop band the music world has ever known.

—Thomas Cooney