Pet Shop Boys Community

I became a fan proper in the summer of 1987, when It’s a sin was all over the radio. Given Actually was still some months away, I immediately bought Please, but I was confused by Disco, given it had many of the same tracks. I was probably unfamiliar with the notion of a 12 inch remix. But later that year I borrowed it from a friend and everything clicked. So, like others have said, Disco became my frame of reference for Introspective. No doubt it was to be something of a stopgap album. Let’s not forget that for quite some years Introspective wasn’t counted as a fully formed PSB album; indeed Behaviour was trumpeted as their third LP proper.

I bought Introspective on release day from my local record shop - Groove in Halifax. Groove was a converted terrace house: singles were downstairs; albums upstairs. The shop was owned by a husband and wife team - Diane oversaw singles, and Geoff albums. So upstairs I went to purchase my Introspective cassette. I remember Geoff telling me he didn’t understand the artwork - “it looks like it should be called rainbow!”.

When I got home and put it into my double deck cassette player I was immediately blown away by the sheer scope and musical depth of the album. This was Pet Shop Boys in complete technicolour. The orchestra and opera singer of Left to my own devices of course. And the Latin party and stuttering edits and stabs of Domino dancing. But also the thunderstorm bridge to Knuckles’ piano driven I want a dog. The Parisian riot samples and electro drum outro of I’m not scared. The helium rap and oboe house of the completely brand new cut and shunt take on Always on my mind. And the rich harmonies, wah-wah guitar and otherworldly radio broadcast that is It’s alright. Just so much… music… and so much to love and to continue to love.

We talk a lot about their imperial phase, which we all know - according to Neil - ended with Domino dancing. But let’s not forget that the only album they actually recorded during this short window was Introspective. This is the album they recorded when they were at the height of their powers - when everything they touched turned to gold, and when no one told them “no”. It’s therefore brimming with pop confidence and absolutely packed with ideas. In that sense it’s possibly their most pretentious and ambitious work.

Thanks for these insights, everyone - fascinating and exactly what I'd hoped for! I didn't realise quite how widely it was viewed as not being a real album. I think because I didn't hear it until I already knew Discography, it was fairly easy to see it as an LP that had generated three singles. With hindsight, it has a little in common with Disco 3 in its blend of original songs and new mixes, but to me it's in their gift how they categorise it - if they say it's a studio album, it's a studio album, because these categories are fluid anyway.

Anyway please keep it coming!

I remember buying it after the second single and my first impression of the album opener was: "When is this track actually going to start properly? Has Neil gone on strike?"

I came to see it as the natural successor to Disco. While that had all the Please singles, Introspective had Always on my mind and Domino dancing. Throw in I'm not scared, and it was hard not to see Introspective's relationship to the Actually era in a similar way to Disco's relationship with the Please era.

Domino dancing came relatively hot on the heels of Heart - so there wasn't any great delineation or sense that we were in a unique album era itself. It just seemed like a continuum - which, it was, of course, of the imperial phase. It was its natural conclusion. I don't think I resented the lack of "new tracks". It was what they always did. And unless you were buying all their singles, some of these were new anyway. "Oh, so Pet Shop Boys wrote that Patsy Kensit song, then!" In a pre-Internet world, facts we take as read now were less widely-shared and were potentially revelatory back then.

I knew they did a duet with Dusty, I knew they did the Scandal single with her, and I knew they did Losing my mind with Liza - and loved them all. But Eighth Wonder went a little under for me. I knew the record and liked it, but didn't make the connection. My recollection of the lovely Patsy was that she was the grown-up version of the little girl who made "the pod go pop" when selling - not shelling - peas in the 1970s...

Drico.

When my Mom got home with the cassette, I was disappointed and told her to take it back to the record store because there were only six songs! A friend of mine even told me, at the time, that it wasn't an album: it was as 12"!!
The radio edits of Domino dancing and Left to my own devices kept playing on radio. Because of the difference between cassette and vinyl covers, I wondered if there were different editions and even if the CD edition had those radios edits or more songs. Later I found out it was all the same.
I kept listening to the cassete (and later the CD) and, still today, I find the radio edits "odd" or "strange" to my ears.
I still hope, somehow, someday, somewhere, there will be the album version but with the seven-inch mix of Left to my own devices.

Ramzy wrote:Thanks for these insights, everyone - fascinating and exactly what I'd hoped for! I didn't realise quite how widely it was viewed as not being a real album. I think because I didn't hear it until I already knew Discography, it was fairly easy to see it as an LP that had generated three singles. With hindsight, it has a little in common with Disco 3 in its blend of original songs and new mixes, but to me it's in their gift how they categorise it - if they say it's a studio album, it's a studio album, because these categories are fluid anyway.

Anyway please keep it coming!

You had something called a "mini LP" in the 80s, LPs that were shorter than a regular LP but longer than a single. That's how I viewed Introspective. Disco was marketed as a mini LP too, I saw some copies in stores with a sticker on it. U2's Under A Blood Red Sky was a mini LP too.

Verstuurd vanaf mijn SM-A528B met Tapatalk

I got it for x-mas 1988. I was only 9 years old, living in countryside Sweden so there were no reference points for me regarding what PSB should or could be so I enjoyed immensely from the start. But I do remember thinking there was something wrong when I put on and heard the intro to Devices. I though there was some error, the wrong music pressed on the vinyl or something. Then the beats kicked in and I was calmed. I thought In My House sounded weird but I loved I'm not scared. I didn't know this song had already been recorded or that I want a dog was a remix of a b-side. For me it was all new, apart from Always on my mind of course. Six tracks? Well as I said, I had no reference points to anything else although I believe I already had Disco by this time so I had no problems with the number of tracks.

I bought INTROSPECTIVE as it was released. I was sixteen, I had bought ACTUALLY one year before, but I do not remember if I bought PLEASE and DISCO before or after INTROSPECTIVE.

I was a little disappointed by INTROSPECTIVE, essentially because of Domino Dancing: I wanted the single version!

However I was amused by such an original format, and my love for PSB increased. I liked immediately Left To My Own Devices and the new versions of I'm Not Scared and Always On My Mind.
When Left To My Own Devices became a single, I was even disappointed by the single remix: the album version for me was (and still is) perfection!

Vintage Youth wrote: Wed 18 Dec 2024, 9:30 am

Patrick Bateman wrote: Wed 18 Dec 2024, 8:41 am. I also remember being intrigued by the inner sleeve pictures of them in their yellow T-shirts holding Kevin (?) and Neil's Botticellian curls (their last hurrah).

Booblies (The Bravest). Owned by a friend. When they plugged Devices on Going Live they brought him along and he tried to kill Gordon the Gopher as Sarah tried to hold it together. The clip was on YouTube until quite recently but was taken down last time I checked.

#DogGeek

I thought it was Booblies the Baddest - but need to look. Maybe I misread.

Loved it when it was released, thought the sleeve was fantastic, to this day my favorite album of all time, it’s just outstanding.
And as a side note their bestselling album.

Remembering this period, it still (irrationally) irritates me that Missing You by Chris De Burgh got to number three and Left to my own devices peaked at number four. Their TOTP performance is truly great - Neil and his curls looking triumphant, the video playing on a screen in the background and Chris with a ketar (as with their performance of Domino dancing). I always associate it with A Day in The Life as they're similar thematically and both from statement albums by the biggest pop groups of their day. Also, I'm Not Scared is the equivalent of Paul producing a number one hit for Mary Hopkin and arguably The Beatles' imperial phase ended when Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane only made number two.

The very first cd I ever bought. On. Release day. My local independent music store, musicrafts in witham Essex. £10:99 at the time, bear in mind that a vinyl album was around £6:99

Sorry but had to add. We were very blessed to have the completely amazing Robin Hancock 11minute dance version of left to my own devices on the cd single. At the time I was overwhelmed that he had managed to extend a 8 minute classic and make it even better. Alongside love comes quickly 12 inch dance mix, this is imho their best ever remix.

Obviously this was before underworld released their longer tracks for the Olympics and I realised 11 minutes was mere beginners timing. And I will kiss … I’ll leave it at that.

joe stalin wrote:Sorry but had to add. We were very blessed to have the completely amazing Robin Hancock 11minute dance version of left to my own devices on the cd single. At the time I was overwhelmed that he had managed to extend a 8 minute classic and make it even better. Alongside love comes quickly 12 inch dance mix, this is imho their best ever remix.

Obviously this was before underworld released their longer tracks for the Olympics and I realised 11 minutes was mere beginners timing. And I will kiss … I’ll leave it at that.

When the single of Left to my own devices came out, my assumption was that the 12 inch mix would be the same as the album version, just as the 12 inch of Domino dancing had been. So I was blown away when I heard The Disco Mix.

Loved it then, love it now.

When I listen to it I'm taken specifically back to sitting in a coach on a school trip, my headphones on, listening to the cassette (or more likely a copy made from a public library original in those days!) on the way to Raglan and Chepstow castles in '88 or '89. Funny how the mind links things strongly and so permanently.


StevePSB

Loved it from day one - blasting it out of my dad’s hifi when I was left home alone on release day. Left to my own devices always sounds great live.

When revisiting it for the podcast episode I sat and listened to it pretty much for the entire flight from Manchester to Washington DC - and it was the perfect accompaniment.

You can listen again here (sorry for the plug)

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/i ... 0616203809

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2ElXrQ ... azlzwIc53w