The review of Fundamental in Dagens Nyheter today. For you curious non-swedes i translated it, since I was bored stiff, but bear in mind that english is not my native language so the translation might not be that perfect in grammar or spelling etc. I think it will be as understandable as the original review though
By the way, for those who have not came across the word sybarites before, it means "a person addicted to luxury and pleasures of the senses".
Anti Casanovas
The song "Casanova in hell" on the new Pet Shop Boys album Fundamental is about erection. Or rather the lack of it when the heterosexual casanova are about to conquer, driven by dreams of rape: "It´s queer/that here/he can´t cast his spell/in her direction/somewhere near/one senses fear"
But there will be victory for the erection: "His erection/will live in history" are the last line in this song that Neil Tennant sings with sweet irony in his voice. For the casanova, the most sterotype heterosexual man, who took on the mission to carry patriarchy on his shoulders, there is always a way out. "Back in the library/his revenge is his story."
"It is all the casanovas in the world that write history, that has the last laugh, rids themselves of guilt and suspicion, creates their own myth - the sybarites - and their legendary sexual adeqacy" says Neil Tennant and continues his radical feminist analysis. This is Pet Shop Boys humour in its best from, with hidden nuances that cannot be described with justice.
Neil Tennant has in interviews expressed his surprise over the lack of rock songs about erections in history. But it´s probably an obvious reason for this: The history of rock is a big phallos in itself. Through everything is a stroke of romantic views of masculinity, and the Pet Shop Boys have always been first to demonstrate against that.
When the Pet Shop Boys became boring a couple of albums ago, when they dedicated their time to musical and silent movie soundtrack and they made some kind of folkrock with guitars on "Release" 2002, people got worried. Had they let go of popmusic, lost the tools of their trade and quit making queer anti-rock? But for Neil Tennant rock will always be "the casanova in hell". A musical tradition, that regardless of how much potency and lust it loses, will write history.
Right now the Pet Shop Boys are writing their own history, with shameless nostalgia. After failing to take on the music of the enemy, they choose to be inspired by themselves on "Fundamental". If one would be mean, one could say they are grasping the last straw - what else would they do now? But if one choose to be generous the album tries to merge the basic formula of the Pet Shop Boys with a contemporary fling for electropop.
They celebrate 25 years together this year, and they have tackled that fact with an reunion with Trevor Horn, the producer that, just like themselves represent at big piece of eighties pop culture. A time when the duo put hemselves in the lexicon of conventions in pop, stating that the Pet Shop Boys way of expression is a synonym to musical subtility and elegance. When Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe made this kind of laidback, frosty, cool discopop mainstream and founded their icon status.
Is about looking back at the essential, the fundamental in their work, as the album title pedagogically tells us. At the same time it is meant to connect to the longing for old fashioned secure values in our time, and peoples fear of everything that is called "fundamentalism". The lyrics browse the war in Irak, the war on terrorism, the immigration laws of Great Britain and the homosocial relation between Tony Blair and the United States president.
Their work seems to have been guided by one simple idea, to pick out everything people connect the Pet Shop Boys with, and do it again. It´s of course in one way a boring choice in a time that do longfor the safe static values that ruled before post modernism.
You will be met by a electronic blizzard, as brilliant as ever, and at times the songs comments to the Pet Shop Boys discography up until "Very" 1993. The oustanding tasteful and safe Pet Shop Boys weigh over on "Fundamental". It is pop in a way that - apparently - ages with grace. But it feels like they are makin covers rather than remixes of themselves.
MALENA RYDELL
(box of facts)
PET SHOP BOYS
* Was formed by Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe 1981 - i e the duo celebrate their 25th anniversary this year.
*"Fundamental" is the 9th album from the former music journalist and the ex architect student.
*One edition of the album is released together with the remixalbum "Fundamentalism".
