FEATURE:
A Similar Point of View
Celebrating Pet Shop Boys’ Acclaimed Very at Thirty
_________
AN extraordinary album…
from the Pet Shop Boys turns thirty on 27th September. Very is among the most celebrated and revered album from, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe. Ahead of that big anniversary, I am going to spend some time with a truly wonderful album. Containing some of the duo’s best-known songs – such as I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing and Liberation -, it is one that is loved by diehard fans and the more casual alike. It is perhaps the final track, a cover of Village People’s Go West, that a lot of people know Very for. I want to come to a review for the album. Arriving almost three years after Pet Shop Boys’ previous studio album, Behaviour, Very showcases and highlights a change of dynamic and pace from their other work. Very moves between Electronic Pop to richly instrumented Dance arrangements. A brave and important album from Pet Shop Boys, it arrived at a time when Neil Tennant revealed his long-rumoured homosexuality. At a time when there was perhaps stigma if an artist came out as gay, you feel like Very is not just a coming out album. It is one that inspired so many fans around the world. It has personal important, yet it is emotionally affecting to the extent that it resonates with everyone who hears it. I want to start out with a Classic Pop feature from 2021. They discussed the making of a stunning album from Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe:
“It is called Very,” said Neil Tennant, “because it is very Pet Shop Boys: It’s very up, it’s very hi-energy, it’s very romantic, it’s very sad, it’s very pop,it’s very danceable, and some of it is very funny…”
Pet Shop Boys’ hits compilation, Discography, wasn’t the end after all. After the duo traded the dancefloor for the melancholic, deeply personal reflections of Behaviour, a return to pop was, perhaps, inevitable. Behaviour left many fans profoundly moved – uniting spirits crushed by the AIDS epidemic – but it hadn’t matched its predecessors in terms of success.
“Behaviour was slaggedoff at the time for not being a dance album,” Tennant relayed to Chris Heath. “We were feeling a little insecure, maybe. Anyway, we decided to do a mega dance-pop album.”
Recording was a three-tier process. Basic tracks were laid down in Lowe’s home studio in Hertfordshire, with Pete Gleadall helping on programming. Further sessions took place at Trevor Horn’s Sarm West studios, before Stephen Hague got involved, with a final mix completed at RAK studios.
While Ace Of Base, UB40 and the omnipresent pop-grunge of The Spin Doctors’ Two Princes fought it out for UK No. 1, PSB stretched out. With the help of designer David Fielding they created an entirely new realm, built of surreal costumes and fantastical imagery.
One episode of TOTP found a pointy-hatted Neil in orange jumpsuit, miming opening single Can You Forgive Her? atop a giant high chair, while Chris frolicked with dancers next to a giant egg. Add Daniel Weil’s injection-moulded, bright orange Lego-like CD case, and PSB’s distinctly ‘Up’ manifesto was realised.
This album would be a turning point; in place of Behaviour’s discreet and seductive habitat, the Boys returned to Hague’s instinctive nous for pop, adopted neon-brite computer games as visual impetus, and hawked an engaging collection of micro-dramas over a renewed joy for the floor.
The Fairlight stabs and forceful programming of that blast-off opening single gave impetus to what was one of the duo’s boldest melodies for some time. A potent tale of “youthful follies and changing teams”, it added weight to suggestions that this was PSB’s ‘coming out’ album.
I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind Of Thing was EDM pop perfection; soft synths and lush orchestration atop thumping kick and snare. A protagonist who feels like taking all his clothes off and dancing to the Rite Of Spring pressed the reset button for an open-palmed freedom.
Liberation dropped all disguises entirely; as Tennant professes his uncontrollable love, we’re escorted up into pearly clouds of symphonic electronica.
The story unfolds as A Different Point Of View suggests discord amongst our lovers, whilst the theme continues into Dreaming Of The Queen, this time reframed within a dream of doleful acceptance – that there are “no more lovers left alive”.
Its stark imagery of the AIDs crisis combined fear, vulnerability, and comfort into one sobering sentiment. As its central character stands naked amongst royalty signing autographs to the sound of the onlookers’ laughter, the compass is wildly spinning out of control.
Full Eurobeat mode follows with the autobiographical Yesterday, When I Was Mad, the cause of the homeless is given weight via The Theatre’s driving beats, while One And One Make Five returns us to that hesitant central love story.
The tempo drops for To Speak Is A Sin, the album’s sombre anomaly, while the pixelated Young Offender approaches an age-gap affair.
Jubilant backing in break-up song One In A Million – initially intended for Take That – frames our lover’s cocksure rejection. The duo’s iconic cover of Go West wraps up what to many fans is the duo’s crowning moment.
Very is the one and only Pet Shop Boys’ album to make UK No. 1. In an era when AIDs was upending lives left, right and centre, here was a hopeful, celebratory, masterstroke.
Very Rare
Once again leading the crowd in terms of innovative formats, the Pets decided that the wealth of floor-friendly (largely) instrumental material that they had banked during the Very sessions would be best served up as a bonus disc added to a special limited edition of the album.
While largely forgotten and now somewhat hard to find, Relentless is a curio of the PSB catalogue, for sure, but its euphoric, house-bound vistas display an integral part of their songwriting palette.
An initial run of the album entitled Very Relentless featured this bountiful companion disc that compiled six (almost) voice-less treasures in one place – My Head Is Spinning, Forever In Love, KDX 125, We Came From Outer Space, The Man Who Has Everything and One Thing Leads To Another.
At just over half an hour, Relentless contrasts the unapologetically bright pop of Very with equally unapologetic synthpop dance that ranges from house to trance and techno. We love it, but for many it’s one reserved for the true Petheads.”
Acclaimed by critics because Very mixed the best elements from previous albums, there is directness, plenty of upbeat moments, plus raw and direct emotion. It is among the Pet Shop Boys’ most consistent albums. I want to focus on one review in a bit. Because Very is such an important album – and one that went to number one in the U.K. and twenty in the U.S. (on the Billboard chart) -, so I want to lift straight from Wikipedia and their collation of reviews for a magnificent album that was among 1993’s best. If many associate Pet Shop Boys with the '80s, assuming their regency and reign was exclusively in that decade, you would do well to listen to the magnificent Very:
“Writing for NME, David Quantick deemed Very "brilliant from start to finish" and "as moving and moved as any other Pet Shop Boys album, just more obviously so", noting a shift from the "melancholy" of Behaviour towards "a sense of, gulp, happiness." In Select, Stuart Maconie speculated that the album's "more lively" musical direction may have been motivated by the "muted" reception to Behaviour, and commented that "Very's beauty lies in the formidable yet effortless plate-spinning trick that lets gorgeous and vibrant pop tunes co-exist with rich, strange and complex conceits." David Bennun of Melody Maker noted that, after the "muted" and "distressingly grown up" sound on Behaviour, Very contains "track after track, dizzy with strings and brass, of the purest, most intelligent and, cruicially, poppiest pop". Mat Snow of Q, meanwhile, wrote that Very confirms the Pet Shop Boys as "a group so tightly focused on its strengths to the exclusion of any meaningful experiment that it drives a coach and horses through the First Commandment of Pop, namely 'Thou Shalt Explore a New Direction on Every Album'."
Chicago Tribune critic Greg Kot opined that "Very qualifies as terrific pop on the strength of its music alone", and that "as its gay worldview unfolds—unapologetic yet unassuming, humorous yet touching, political yet personal—Very takes on the dimensions of a classic.” J. D. Considine, reviewing Very for Rolling Stone, highlighted the social commentary and "mixed emotions" in its songs, concluding that "it's that sort of depth that makes Very worth hearing again and again." Entertainment Weekly's Greg Sandow considered the album "very understated musically" but also "very deeply felt", while The Village Voice's Robert Christgau found that Tennant's lyrics showed a newfound romantic sincerity: "Convinced cornballs may still find his emotions attenuated, but I say the production values suit the tumult in his heart and the melodies the sweetness in his soul”. Less impressed was Dennis Hunt of the Los Angeles Times, who said that Very "is listenable and danceable, but overall it sounds as if their creativity has petered out—they're recycling these days rather than creating."
In the 2004 Rolling Stone Album Guide, Tom Hull noted that Very was released to more uniformly positive reviews from critics than Behaviour, which he attributed to its more uptempo sound and "unusually direct" love songs, "with most making more sense gay than not." AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine stated in retrospect that "Very is one of their very best records, expertly weaving between the tongue-in-cheek humor of 'I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing,' the quietly shocking 'Can You Forgive Her?,' and the bizarrely moving cover of the Village People's 'Go West”.
I will finish off by dropping in Rolling Stone’s examination of Very. They were looking back on the album in 2000. I think they make some interesting observations and have written a review that gets to the heart and core of Very. It is definitely one of my favourite Pet Shops Boys albums:
“Could there be a more perfect marriage of pop sensibilities than the Pet Shop Boys covering a Village People hit? You wouldn't think so. Yet the version of "Go West" that closes Very is hardly the campy romp casual fans might have expected. In fact, there's something ineffably sad about this remake. Because where Victor Willis' vocal on the original infused its lyrics about a gay promised land with a sense of manifest destiny, Neil Tennant's wan tenor only underscores the fragility of that '70s club-land dream. So instead of visions of San Francisco decadence, what we're left with is a sad nostalgia.
But that's very typical of Very. It isn't simply that there's more to these songs than sly wit and catchy choruses (although there are plenty of both); this time around, the Boys appear to have a few axes to grind. Some are obvious enough, like the spiteful satire of musicpress vipers and record-biz sycophants in "Yesterday, When I Was Mad." Or "The Theater," which describes how the well-dressed crowds on their way to the latest Andrew Lloyd Webber hit blithely ignore the street kids crowding the sidewalks of London's East End ("We're the bums you step over as you leave the theatre," spits Tennant's chorus).
Others, though, require a fair amount of interpretation. Take "Dreaming of the Queen," for example. On the surface, it's about a dream in which Tennant takes tea with Queen Elizabeth and Princess Di and ends up realizing that he's forgotten to put on any clothes. But beneath that surface drollery is a touching elegy to the toll AIDS has taken, leaving us trapped in a world where love has died because "there are no more lovers left alive/No one has surprised."
That's not to say that Very is all seriousness and no fun – these are the Pet Shop Boys, after all. But as fun as it is to wade into the tuneful exuberance of pop fare like "One in a Million" or "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing," there are deeper pleasures to be had in the mixed emotions conveyed in "To Speak Is a Sin" and "Can You Forgive Her?" And it's that sort of depth that makes Very worth hearing again and again. (RS 670)”.
On 27th September, it will be thirty years since Very arrived in the world. You can buy Very on vinyl. I am not sure there is an anniversary releasing coming. As you find on the Pet Shop Boys’ website: “The 1993 album ‘Very’ was a number one record for Pet Shop Boys in the UK, and has to date sold in excess of five million copies worldwide. It contains 5 singles, including their cover of ‘Go West’ – a number 2 hit for PSB – and lead single ‘Can You Forgive Her?’. The album is also the first to be produced almost entirely by Pet Shop Boys themselves - with additional programming and production courtesy of Pete Gleadall and Stephen Hague”. There are some great articles out there that go deep with Very. If all that is not reason enough to listen to and celebrate Very, then I don’t know…
WHAT is.