Music review: Pet Shop Boys, Hydro, Glasgow - 'a true career-spanning extravaganza'
The Pet Shop Boys’ current live show covers most of their 80s and 90s bangers and cherrypicks elsewhere for maximum emotional impact, writes Fiona Shepherd
Pet Shop Boys, Hydro, Glasgow ****
“After 40 years, we are still the Pet Shop Boys” – words to gladden the heart from Neil Tennant as he, Chris Lowe and band completed another two-hour masterclass in playful pop songwriting, otherwise known as the Dreamworld tour. Their greatest hits show has been updated and remixed to include new material from latest album Nonetheless, curating a true career-spanning extravaganza which covered most of the 80s and 90s bangers and cherrypicked elsewhere for maximum emotional impact, from melancholy to ecstasy.
Opening song Suburbia, delivered from behind sculptural metallic masks, under stage streetlights, is Pet Shop Boys in microcosm with its celestial synth hook, subtle social comment, dramatic middle eight, sleek lines and Neil Tennant’s plaintive pipes. The perennially inscrutable Lowe cleaved to his mask for a number of songs but Tennant’s face was all joy as he removed his and launched into early classics Opportunities and the wistful Rent.
Eight songs in the scenery shifted to reveal their backing musicians, Afrika Green, Simon Tellier and Glasgow’s Clare Uchima providing additional keyboards, percussion and vocals. The pleasingly percussive Single Bilingual and sheer goodness of Se a Vida E were mid-set highlights, along with a sultry Love Comes Quickly.
Footage of Rudolph Nureyev filled the screens for recent single Dancing Star and their latest release, moody ballad A New Bohemia, was followed by Jealousy, the first “proper” song they wrote back in 1982.
Uchima stepped forward to duet with Tennant on a graceful What Have I Done to Deserve This, while Lowe had his vocal moment on Paninaro, a reminder that you can come to the old pop subjects from any angle.
Their covers – Always On My Mind, Go West, It’s Alright – have long sounded like their songs and their peerless originals It’s A Sin and encore choices West End Girls (with a key lyric altered to “Mariupol to Kyiv Station”) and Being Boring were wrought with as much thoughtfulness as party spirit.