Pet Shop Boys
Nonetheless
70--80点相当
現況9割くらいが80点相当
The Pet Shop Boys take pride in the fact, to quote their 1990 opus, that over their four decades in the game, the critics could never accuse them of “being boring”. In fact, their 15th studio album sees the band staying true to their familiar core DNA while discovering fresh sonic sandboxes to play in. For ‘Nonetheless’ – continuing the cardinal rule of one-word titles – Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe hooked up with Arctic Monkeys producer James Ford and, following their recent Berlin-set trilogy that began with 2013’s revitalising ‘Electric’, the results feel more lush, stately and majestic.
Each track is bedecked with a full orchestra, and those swooning strings are deployed to particularly effective use on the Burt Bacharach-esque ‘The Secret of Happiness’, which is virescent with new love, and ‘A New Bohemia’, where faded stars try to find the new happening scene like cultural orphans. Both those tracks find the duo fully leaning into Tennant’s documented love of 1960s music – even the pop-fanfare of lead single ‘Loneliness’ (which could have come off their 1993 album ‘Very’) includes a lyrical nod to Ringo Starr “walking down the canal/downcast and alone”, while the euphoric ‘Dancing Star’ chronicles the ballet icon Rudolf Nureyev’s defection from Soviet Russia in 1961, and is awash with the kind of twinkling synths that Madonna might have shimmied to in New York’s Danceteria.