Customer Reviews

Electric

5 star:		(70)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

As good as any they have produced in the past. Still a first class duo. Look forward to many more.

Probably one of the best Pet Shop Boys albums. An amazing album. Love the thumping opening track Axis - just amazing.
Thursday is a modern day West End Girls and The Last To Die is haunting. Only Neil Tenant could write lyrics such as I've been hanging out with various riff raf down on the Goldhawk Road and make it sound plausable. Album of the year so far for me and in my top 3 PSB albums. Well done Neil & Chris and also Stuart Price who produced the album.

All fantastic dance tunes. Pet shop boys have endless talent and this album 30 years on from their beginning just proves it!

this is a return to form after last years average Elysium the tracks are really catchy and I recommend it

Strange one this... on first listen I really didn't like it. But after repeated listens I have to say it's superb. In my view it's no doubt up there as on of the best PSB albums ever. 5 stars from a long term fan, without hesitation.

The Boys have done it, they are back on form with legendary producer Stuart Price. This is the dance record of 2013...Great,don't miss it .

What a wonderful new album! Full of electronic music, good pop and the marvellous voice of Neil Tennant. Although it's only got 9 tracks, all of them are good to dance to, they're so lively and full of energy. Every single track is on my iPhone.

I've been their fan since 2003 and they've never disappointed me. Greetings from PERU!

No downtempo tracks on this album; it's full on electronic dance from beginning to end. This has a very electronic vibe with some truely out there sounds.

Listen to Fluorescent for a good example of how well crafted the electronica is on this album.

Listen to Bolshy to make you smile and dance (even has its own acid house breakdown in the middle).

Truely outstanding album.

While last year's "Elysium" was downtempo, world-weary and a bit of a revisiting of well-trodden PSB territory, "Electric" - produced by dance wunderkind Stuart Price - is that album's antithesis: it's uptempo, energetic and fresh-sounding.

1. "Axis"
The opener to the album is really a statement of intent, without the usual verse/chorus structure we've come to expect from the Boys, and in fact featuring hardly any vocals at all. The message is clear: this is no ordinary PSB studio album. It's a great - if slightly overlong - start.

2. "Bolshy"
Interlaced with lines spoken in Russian (probably an allusion to the derivation of the word "bolshy"), we get to hear Neil Tennant singing for the first time on the album. Halfway through there's a dream of a breakdown that features the kind of cowbells, handclaps and orchestral hits that might have come straight from the Phil Harding remix of "Always On My Mind" circa 1987. A brilliantly catchy track.

3. "Love Is A Bourgeois Construct"
This track is backdropped against a Purcell melody that'll be instantly recognisable to virtually everyone (Michael Nyman also used this melody in his soundtrack to The Draughtsman's Contract). Like most PSB songs based on classical compositions, it doesn't quite work, but it's still highly enjoyable nonetheless.

4. "Fluorescent"
With a sample of someone grunting for a snare drum and banks of wibbling synthesisers that constantly threaten to wibble off key, "Fluorescent" is gloriously sleazy-sounding. Tennant sings about a person's beauty and fame, and how both are destined - just like a fluorescent light bulb - not to last forever. Along the way he manages to rhyme "mark" with "oligarch".

5. "Inside A Dream"
The previous track's less sleazy sibling, "Inside A Dream" is a sublime track with a spritely bassline and a percussion sound that might have been lifted straight from Mel & Kim's "Showing Out". There's something indefinably wonderful - dreamy, even - about this song.

6. "The Last To Die"
The only track on the album not written by Tennant and Lowe, this is probably the strongest song on the album, and a testament to Bruce Springsteen's songwriting skills. It somehow manages to be both euphoric and heartbreaking at the same time, and is reminiscent of "Human" by The Killers (also produced by Stuart Price).

7. "Shouting In The Evening"
This track is light on vocals, and is really just based around a single synth riff - but what a riff! Hi-energy, pounding, infectious: that riff would get any club going. My only complaint is that the track goes out with a whimper rather than the bang it deserves.

8. "Thursday"
"Thursday" has the same kind of bassline and synth pads as the Boys' first ever hit "West End Girls" 28(!) years ago. "I wanna know you're gonna stay for the weekend," sings Tennant, followed by Chris Lowe listing the days of the week from Thursday to Sunday. Then up pops Example, whose rapping/singing style suits the song to a T.

9. "Vocal"
The first "proper" single from the album, "Vocal" is an ode to nightclubbing that, suitably enough, is in the generic style of a clubbing track. The melody - or the vocal - lifts it above the average club fodder though, and, as ever, Tennant's voice sounds so right laid on top of an electro dance track.

This is the best Pet Shop Boys album since 1993's "Very", and the most exciting since 1988's "Introspective". You have to wonder whether it's been made possible by the Boys' departure from Parlophone, a label who'd possibly been demanding "Radio 2-friendliness" ever since the Boys' records were dropped from Radio 1's playlists (if so, those same record company execs will be flagellating themselves with their own rulebooks when they hear this album). Or maybe the Boys are just overly fond of coming up with lush, middle-of-the-road ballads.

Either way, it's the energetic tracks that made the Pet Shop Boys' name. I'll never forget the first time I heard the over-the-top thunderousness of "It's A Sin", nor the first time I heard an old Elvis ballad transformed into a joyous show-stopper. "Electric" has the same kind of feel to it, and I can imagine it becoming the soundtrack to summer 2013 for many people. It's been a long time coming, but the Pet Shop Boys are back on top form.

A mere 10 months after the decidedly mellow autumnal feel of "Elysium" (considered average in some quarters) we have "Electric" on our hands - and a more different proposition/beast you couldn't get. As promised (by Tennant and Lowe) - this is a banging dance affair. And it is completely wonderful. Nine tracks of throbbing, handbags at dawn, pumping disco. It opens spectacularly with "Axis" and continues to astound until it finishes poignantly with "Vocal". What really hits the listener is how many of these tracks are really very good (I was going to list them, but there are really too many). We are talking "Discography" quality. So, respect to Stuart Price for bringing-out the best in them and to Pet Shop Boys themselves for delivering a stunning album number 12.