Track-by-Track: From Please to Nonetheless

[Drico One]

For a band that had the Midas touch with cover versions for years (Always on my mind, It's alright, Where the streets have no name, and Go West - three of which are astounding records, one merely great), I tend to glaze over when I hear they are covering something these days. It's been like this since Somewhere.

I like their cover of Somewhere, but it was their first cover version single that I didn't love. It's overblown and hollow, utterly superficial. Compare this to Go West - which had multiple meanings behind the bombast - or to the U2 cover which exploded the myth of rock music. Always on my mind reinvented that song in their own image. It's alright made a pop hit out of an underground dance record. Somewhere just sort of existed to advertise their Savoy residence and had little resonance beyond that. It was an uninspired misstep.

Drico.

[panda magic]

I was listening to disc 2 of Smash recently and was surprised when Somewhere started - I'd forgotten all about it. At the time when it came out, I'd already been a fan since Behaviour and it seemed like it was another iteration of the growing (and worrying) trend of "PSB tracks that just aren't for me" (after Single-Bilingual and Se A Vida E). The production was, and remains still, too frantic and busy for my tastes.

[Drico One]

Track 110: For your own good
Chronology: Nightlife, Track 1

And so we go down the dumper at last in nothing but frightwigs with eyebrows by Denis (Healey). Ooh, I've dated myself there. Speaking of the last century...

Nightlife, emerging in early October 1999, was the last Pet Shop Boys album I had to buy before hungrily devouring its hidden treasures. With my portable CD player in tow, I bought it in HMV and quickly slipped in the disc to be transported to a world of quiet, euphoric despair.

Imagine. Compact discs. Portable CD players. "Buying" music. HMV! But I digress. The times were indeed a-changing and fans had a new way to connect...

I don't think you can downplay the importance of an online fan presence at a time when our heroes' commercial fortunes were in steep decline. The Introspective mailing list was very much in full flow in 1999, but the new Dotmusic forum was clearly the way forward. This very Community traces itself to that. But this isn't just some nostalgic point about us. The Internet completely changed the fan experience. We're through the looking glass now.

I posted an excited review of Nightlife to the mailing list on the Friday night, three days before the release of the record in the UK. At the time, I recall feeling that I discussed the record online almost as much as I listened to it, whereas in the past my fandom was largely solitary, with plently of exposure to mainstream media. The Internet was an outlet that connected totally different people from totally different parts of the world – and all because they loved Pet Shop Boys. That was quite something at the time. It still is, but we take it for granted now.

When the first single limped into the chart at number 15, fans could immolate collectively and prognosticate on the imminent demise of their fallen heroes. How cathartic. Even better, such commercial failures provided ample opportunities to speculate on where it all went wrong. Had the Internet existed in 1987, I'm not sure the quality of discussion would have been up to much. In 1999, people thought that Neil and Chris were down the toilet, not merely the dumper, and this really concentrated minds. Funnily enough, it was the making of us. In the past, Pet Shop Boys had been central to the cultural zeitgeist and very present in mainstream media. By 1999, that had changed. It would have been very lonely without Dotmusic.

Nightlife's a very dark album in many ways, and whatever love is spoken of is deeply and disturbingly unrequited. The sheer variety of styles make it an intoxicating listen, but this record took them further into camp and a ghetto largely of their own making. In some ways, I blame the musical, which really only produced a couple of worthwhile songs. Some of the song titles of this era could have been parodies, yet the despair, darkness, and demented euphoria here lifts the album above its sometimes tacky inclinations.

It begins well, with the hugely atmospheric, intensely spooky For your own good, another worthy entry into their top album-openers chart. Sure, it's all Rollo, but its insistent desperation makes it starkly compelling. If I was to fault it, I would say that in comparison to some of the Maxi Jazz monologues, Neil's protagonist sounds passive, weak, and pitiable. "I can't get no sleep" sounds that little bit more hip and street-literate than "I can help you recover from pain that you hide". But Neil's proposition holds more intrigue than Maxi's moan, and so we willingly enter a shadowy world of interpersonal dysfunction...

Drico.

[Lleonard Pler]

If a good album opener has to introduce you into the themes, sounds and tone of the songs to follow, For your own good is clearly their best opener. All the other Nightlife songs benefit from having For your own good as the first track. They make more sense because of it.

It's euphoric, it's desperate, it's brilliant. Not that different from One more chance, another great opener.

[Capsigrany]

I agree one of their best openers and a high level album track. For me Nightlife is a very good (and underrated) album. Their partnership with Rollo worked very well in my opinion, and should have been exploited more in club-land terms.

[NOBODY75]

I think it's a great track. However, I always had the strange feeling that it came three years too late, and that this sound, this song, would have been a great comeback after Very and a fitting preview for a new album in '96. I think by '99 it was already too late, and they were right not to release it as a single. But it's a top album opener.

[leesmapman]

For me a weak opening track and really of that time.

[sterlinglush]

Another longtime favorite track. I'd just moved to the San Francisco Bay Area from DC when it came out. It was the height of the dotcom madness and by some miracle I actually found a flat, and this was the soundtrack to that first year there. Another track I've always thought overshadowed the ones released as singles.

[Patrick Bateman]

Unlike Drico, I was off-grid in 1999 so experienced the whole Nightlife era slightly differently, while reaching the same conclusion.

Nightlife is the sound of PSB entering the dumper, the Valhalla of pop imagined by a geeky Smash Hits journalist many moons earlier. It's fat Marc Bolan, Adam Ant at Live Aid, Gary Numan's first hair transplant, the Bee Gees in the early 80s...roll up, roll up, let's watch as the greatest pop duo of all time become commercially and culturally irrelevant.

[NotInvisible]

Brilliant opening track… that leads to their worst album. They sound so good with Rollo on production. At least this era gives us the masterpiece that is …Drunk but otherwise we’re in for a rough pair of eras.

[rathound]

its a great track, let down by what followed. I do wish they'd gone full in on the Rollo thing tbh. The sound was very much of the time, and unlike some of the dance music attempts in the Bilingual era, it was bang up to date, if not anything new or revolutionary. Not necessarily my favourite type of music, but strip out the lyrics and it'd fit seamlessly on many of the trance type compilations of the time. A top opening track

[withanattitude]

Great opening track for an album called "Nightlife". It's got the beats and the sounds, the darkness and the ambiguity that are the standard ingredients of a night out. The fact that they quite bluntly lean onto an already successful sound scheme made me think "Oh, not so avant-garde anymore" back then. But it works well for me and is a good listen that always uplifts me when hearing it on my headphones.

Nice musing on the campfire-aspect of this forum, by the way, Drico!

[Patrick Bateman]

Track 111: Closer to Heaven
Chronology: Nightlife, Track 2

So this is my least favourite album and they were in the dumper but...how on earth wasn't this the lead single? It sounds like the Pet Shop Boys, replete with banging, contemporary production and has an irresistible, relentless chorus. I like I don't know what you want but I can't give it any more but it was not a lead single, particularly at a time when they were falling out of fashion.

We know they've always made some odd choices (as Miserablism being played last night demonstrates) but those strange decisions would become more prevalent from this point on. This is your lead single. It probably wouldn't have made any difference but at least give yourself a fighting chance.

[petshopgrrl]

Track 110: For your own good
Chronology: Nightlife, Track 1

It begins well, with the hugely atmospheric, intensely spooky For your own good, another worthy entry into their top album-openers chart. Sure, it's all Rollo, but its insistent desperation makes it starkly compelling.

As you can probably tell, I ADORE this one and I will frequently loop it so much that I've played it about five times more than any other PSB song in my collection. I love the way it shimmers and shivers and builds and drives and the way the key change in the middle ("life isn't easy...") suggests a respite from the desperation. I don't see the protagonist as being weak and desperate though - I think of this one as Neil in "archangel mode" where he's singing from the perspective of a superior being who knows the other person really doesn't have a choice but to call him tonight. It's got that kind of dispassionate but seductive feel to it. Chills!

Track 111: Closer to Heaven
Chronology: Nightlife, Track 2

..how on earth wasn't this the lead single? It sounds like the Pet Shop Boys, replete with banging, contemporary production and has an irresistible, relentless chorus. I like I don't know what you want but I can't give it any more but it was not a lead single, particularly at a time when they were falling out of fashion.

My favorite rendition of CtH - the trademark melancholic euphoria and that ethereal, breathy falsetto. The lines "In my hopes /
Paradise is real / Horoscopes / Can’t forecast how we’ll feel" are just *chef's kiss*.

These two tracks and I don't know what you want but I can't give it any more form the best 1-2-3 punch of any of the albums, as far as I'm concerned.


Some of you really took the Nightlife era personally, didn't you? The bitterness is palpable.

[leesmapman]

Probably the best track of the album. Really like it.