Last September's weary, autumnal Elysium didn't offer much hope for the future of Pet Shop Boys, so it's a bit of a surprise that they've whipped up its sequel in under a year. (Or, rather, its companion, including some songs they started at the earlier sessions). It'se even more of a surprise that Electric is their most immediate, jubilant record in at least a decade-- a return to a couple of elements of their work that had been lying fallow for too long.
Most notably, this is the first time in a while that Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have borrowed from what's going on in dance clubs in the service of pop songwriting, with help from veteran producer Stuart Price. ("Shouting in the Evening" even nods to dubstep.) Electric isn't quite electrifying in the way that Very and Introspective and "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" are, but nearly every track has a moment or two that ignites seemingly long-gone enthusiasm.
Sometimes, that's because the Boys are using specific tricks that have worked for them before. "Love Is a Bourgeois Construct" is another in their string of modified classical pieces, taking its countermelody from Henry Purcell's King Arthur (by way of Michael Nyman's "Chasing Sheep Is Best Left to Shepherds"), and its sour-grapes premise from a line in a David Lodge novel. And "Thursday" might have recalled 1986's "Love Comes Quickly" even without a synth-bass-and-bells introduction that makes it sound like that song's fraternal twin.
The one thing Tennant and Lowe arguably do better than anyone else, though, is queering pop-- finding ways to recast seemingly sexuality-neutral musical ideas as specifically gay. "Bolshy"-- slang for "uncooperative" or "belligerent," roughly-- isn't ordinarily a gendered word, but it sure is in the song by that name here, and its connotation of Bolsheviks fits in with the Pet Shop Boys' fascination with all things early-Soviet. Electric's sole cover is a brilliant recontextualization: "The Last to Die" is a 2007 Bruce Springsteen song, whose chorus quotes John Kerry's 1971 condemnation of the Vietnam war. Tennant and Lowe scarcely change a word of its lyrics, but arranged and sung as a Pet Shop Boys song, it abruptly and unmistakably becomes a song about gay culture's transition from the AIDS crisis of the "West End Girls" era to its current focus on domesticity. That's quite a feat.
In place of the leavetakings of their past few albums' final tracks, Electric ends with "Vocal", a fantasy of hearing exactly the kind of music you've always wanted to hear, in the perfect club. "I like the singer/ He's lonely and strange/ Every track has a vocal," Tennant muses in his lonely, strange voice. It's a bit unusual to hear so many vocal tracks in a club these days, he knows, but he's imagining that his songs could save some kid the way other people's songs once saved him.
