The Pet Shop Boys take pride in the fact, to quote their 1990 opus, that over their four decades in the game, the critics could never accuse them of “being boring”. In fact, their 15th studio album sees the band staying true to their familiar core DNA while discovering fresh sonic sandboxes to play in. For ‘Nonetheless’ – continuing the cardinal rule of one-word titles – Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe hooked up with Arctic Monkeys producer James Ford and, following their recent Berlin-set trilogy that began with 2013’s revitalising ‘Electric’, the results feel more lush, stately and majestic.
Each track is bedecked with a full orchestra, and those swooning strings are deployed to particularly effective use on the Burt Bacharach-esque ‘The Secret of Happiness’, which is virescent with new love, and ‘A New Bohemia’, where faded stars try to find the new happening scene like cultural orphans. Both those tracks find the duo fully leaning into Tennant’s documented love of 1960s music – even the pop-fanfare of lead single ‘Loneliness’ (which could have come off their 1993 album ‘Very’) includes a lyrical nod to Ringo Starr “walking down the canal/downcast and alone”, while the euphoric ‘Dancing Star’ chronicles the ballet icon Rudolf Nureyev’s defection from Soviet Russia in 1961, and is awash with the kind of twinkling synths that Madonna might have shimmied to in New York’s Danceteria.
Mainly written during lockdown, ‘Nonetheless’ unfolds like a 10-song short story collection, peppered with richly-drawn characters, and esoteric cultural references. The woozily romantic ‘Feel’ – originally earmarked for a Brandon Flowers solo album – paints a picture of somebody counting down the days until they can visit their lover in prison and aches with longing. The electroclash ‘Bullet for Narcissus’, meanwhile, combines New Order guitars with the inner-monologue of a bodyguard tasked with protecting a Trump-like tyrant who’s “so banal he’s made of mainstream”.
Best of all however, is the wistful and nostalgic instant-classic ‘New London Boy’, a companion piece to aforementioned ‘Being Boring’, detailing Bowie-loving Tennant’s move to the capital in 1973, taking his first steps into pop stardom and sexuality. With evocative lyrics (“Everybody’s watching / Grab your chance / All it takes is a stolen glance”), it encapsulates the feeling of stepping into a gay disco for the first time – to paraphrase writer Paul Burston’s sleeve-notes to last year’s ‘Box of Sin’ hi-NRG compilation – terrified that somebody might speak to you and equally terrified that nobody will. The track was inspired by lyrics Tennant had written when he was aged 17, pondering where he would be in 15 years’ time. Fifteen years later, he was at Number One with ‘West End Girls’, and ‘New London Boy’ doffs an ‘80s BOY cap to it by having him revisit its rap-style.
Tennant, one of pop’s great theorists, recently remarked to NME that he thought, subconsciously, this might be their “queer album”, and the climatic ‘Love Is the Law’ sees him poetically recounting Oscar Wilde’s post-prison stay in France, watching sexual transactions in the shadows, as the music bombastically swells like a lost John Barry-composed James Bond theme. Marrying the street level to the grandiose was always the Pet Shop Boys’ MO from the start, and over forty years into their career, ‘Nonetheless’ is the sublime sound of pop’s standard-bearers continuing to hone their craft.
