More than 30 years from the day they first met in an electronics shop in London, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, aka Brit duo Pet Shop Boys, show no signs of ending the party.
The electro-pop pair have sold 50 million records worldwide and achieved eight platinum albums in the UK alone. Keeping up a steady output of material, they’ve never had more than four years in between full-length releases since first coming together – their 12th studio album, Electric, was released last month, less than a year after their previous project, Elysium.
At the same time, Tennant and Lowe have been working on a forthcoming musical project about World War II and recently launched their 2013 world tour - which is what is bringing them to play their first big concerts in China this month. Not too shabby for a couple of posh Brits in their late 50s.
“We were actually shortly in China in 2011,” says Tennant, known as the more talkative of the two. “Prada invited us to play in Beijing for a show and we did a small-scale performance. Yes, and we really enjoyed it.”
This time, though, they’re working on a much larger canvas. The Electric World Tour is a very energetic, slightly dark show that boasts video screens shaped like Tennant and Lowe’s heads, dance routines, an excerpt from Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and barking dogs, among other assorted curiosities – a full-on homage to theater, performance art and, of course, dance music.
“Electric is definitely a summer album,” explains Tennant. “It’s very much set on the dance floor. In a way, it’s a response to Elysium, which had a more reflective, autumnal mood. It’s this contrast that makes the show.”
That, and the expertise of both stage designer Es Devlin – who’s created some of the most extraordinarily ambitious and imaginative sets for artists big on showmanship like Kanye West and Lady Gaga – and producer extraordinaire Stuart Price, aka Jacques Lu Cont, best known as Madonna’s right-hand man in Confessions on a Dance Floor. The 80s vibe you get from Electric is no doubt heavily due to Price’s dance-pop expertise.
A mix of old-school synth, drum machine programming and new-school computer mangling, the album is not just a return to banging dance-floor beats, but a fist-pumping anthem for the duo’s witty experimentalism.
“We have taken in some new elements, yet still retained our own style - Yes we mostly listen to electro, but for this production we have also branched out into pop-rock music,” says Tennant, adding, “We were in Berlin watching Vampire Weekend last year.” Not exactly a gig you would expect the two West End boys to attend.
Alongside the euphoric sound of Electric, Tennant’s genuinely poignant, deadpan socio-political lyrics are, unsurprisingly, the other main feat of the album. Pet Shop Boys have long had an eye for quirky and clever texts that hint at the political but eschew direct commentary. ‘Love is a Bourgeois Construct’ is a case in point.
The slyly politicized, tongue-in-cheek character of the duo, however, hasn’t always been met in a humorous way. In 2009, the Chinese government forced the pair to censor a few lyrics, albeit non-China specific, on their tenth record Yes before it could hit the shelves in China. Tennant is still baffled at the outrage the “offensive” song, ‘Legacy,’ caused.
“Every single album is a whole package to us, a whole thing that can’t be dissected. Since including China in our world tour though, we’ve been planning a complete and extensive DJ set for our shows here.”
Playing at the MasterCard Center on August 22, the duo is particularly eager to see how the show will be received.
“Being our first time in Beijing, Chris and I are extremely interested in testing how the audience will react to it. It’s a brand-new experience for us.”
Considering they have been touring since 1989, it’s nice to think these legends still get a thrill from playing in a new city. Here’s to hoping the Middle Kingdom won’t let them down.
// RMB480-RMB1,280, Aug 22, 8pm. MasterCard Center, Intersection of Fuxing Lu and Xisihuan, Wukesong, Haidian District 万事达中心, 海淀区复兴路69号(6828 6386, www.mastercardcenter.com.cn)
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