Actually - Pet Shop Boys (1987)

 


Actually, The Pet Shop Boy's second album is an album I had on cassette in high school, but I'm not sure if I listened to it very much -- my tastes were developing very rapidly back then and probably not long after I got it I had sort of graduated to more guitar-centered rock and Prince worship. 

Listening to it now, thirty five years later, I'm actually very pleased with how well written and intelligent these songs are and kind of stunned that this was a huge hit, given the incredibly sophisticated lyrical content of most of the songs. This is a deep album that doesn't flinch from heavy topics: whether it's the vapidness of shopping and the line it draws between consumer culture and corruption in high politics,  the cynicism of the gold-digging lover or the striken horror of a young man just beginning to admit he's homosexual -- in a decidedly more homophobic time that was still reeling in reaction to the AIDS epidemic. 

All of that wouldn't matter, if it wasn't for the quality fo the melodies and songcraft and the singer (Neil Tennant? I think?)'s lightly nasal, arch voice, which delivers both the complex lyrics and the pretty melodies with aplomb. 

In the end, I'm reminded a bit of Vince Clark's  or Martin Gore's synth pop work: but Depeche Mode, for all their Gothic mopiness were never ever as dark as this album is. Delivering such dark messages couched in such brilliant pop songs is quite a feat. There is one song on the album that gets a little too Andrew Lloyd WEbber for me, but mostly this is an extremely enjoyable adult pop album that I have spent far too little time with.

4/5

Spotify Link:

https://open.spotify.com/album/0p5QwhEke5P9mFY4CY9u4j?si=op4evjXITGq-ef-tQfdWxA

My current copy of this is just downloaded from iTunes; it's the 2001 remaster. Loud. I'd love to get a copy of an earlier master, but not burning to track one down. 

A.M. Wilco

A.T.O.M. - Carbon Silicon

ABBA - ABBA 

ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits

Abbey Road - The Beatles

Achtung, Baby! U2

Actually - Pet Shop Boys

Adult/Child- The Beach Boys

Aerosmith's Greatest Hits

After The Gold Rush - Neil Young

Afterglow - Crowded House

Aftermath (UK Version) - The Rolling Stones

Against The Odds: 1974-1982 Blondie (three disc version)

Aimee Mann Live at St. Ann's Warehouse

Aiming For Your Head - Betchadupa

The Album -- ABBA

The Album That Never Was - The Kinks

All Four One - The Motels

All Over the Place - The Bangles

All Summer Long -- The Beach Boys

All the Great Hits -- Diana Ross

All Things Must Pass -- George Harrison

All This Useless Beauty -- Elvis Costello & the Attractions

All-Time Greatest Hits - Neil Diamond

Alluvium -- Eddie Rayner

Almost Blue -- Elvis Costello & The Attractions

Almost Summer - Celebration

Alpha Mike Foxtrot -- Wilco

The Alphabetchadupa - Betchadupa

Altitude - ALT

American Idiot Green Day

American Prayer -- The Doors

Amnesiac Radiohead

And I Feel Fine...The Best of the IRS years (1982-1987) - R.E.M.

Animals - Pink Floyd

Anodyne - Uncle Tupelo

Another Life - Another Life

Another Music in Another Kitchen: The Buzzcocks

Another Side of Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan

Anthology: Diana Ross & The Supremes

Anthology: Smokey Robinson & The Beatles

Anthology 1: The Beatles

Anthology 2: The Beatles

Anthology 3 The Beatles

Anthology: North South, East West - Tim Finn

Apple Venus: Volume One -- XTC

Apollo 18 - They Might Be Giants

The ArchAndroid: Janelle Monae

Are Well-Respected Men - The Kinks

Armed Forces -Elvis Costello & The Attractions

Around the World in a Day - Prince

Arthur (or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) - The Kinks

At My Piano - Brian Wilson

Autoamerican - Blondie

Automatic for the People - R.E.M.


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