Back In The Water Again

Today I offer you three new songs from artists who all found fame/ infamy in the 80s and have kept ploughing their particular own furrows ever since- The The, Pet Shop Boys and Nick Cave. All three have devoted fanbases, all three are artists who have something to say, and all three are associated with a distinct sound and style. The need to keep writing and recording seems to be as strong as ever with them all and the idea propagated by Pete Townshend in The Who about dying before he gets old is long gone. In the 1980s there was a certain amount of derision for The Rolling Stones et al still playing rock ‘n’ roll in their forties. There is nothing ridiculous about this anymore- artists keep going and we are still interested in their music. None of the three here today are solely nostalgia acts either u their old songs will often get the biggest cheers when played live but the new songs are all trying to get something across- about themselves, about aging, about life and death and the state of the world. 

First is Matt Johnson, back as The The, with a single called Cognitive Dissident and a video by Tim Pope. The song has a gnarly blues guitar riff from Little Barrie’s Barry Cadogan, plenty of atmosphere and Matt’s low register voice, the song swelling with backing vocals into the chorus, ‘left is right/ black is white/ Inside out/ Hope is doubt’. Matt has always written the state of the world and the lyrics on Cognitive Dissident circle around our post truth world, emotion and democracy, alienation and AI. The song is the first from an upcoming album Ensoulment (the first for twenty five years) and some gigs. Cognitive Dissident sounds like The The- no surprise there maybe- but the 90s, Dusk era incarnation with Johnny Marr on board rather than the 80s one of Infected and Soul Mining. Matt says the album is hopeful, even though this single is laced with fear, gloom and bad things.

Pet Shop Boys have a new album, Nonetheless, and a single, A new bohemia, and a video starring Neil and Chris, Russell Tovey and Tracey Emin. The Pet Shop Boys are a long way from their Imperial Period of the late 80s to mid 90s, are currently playing an arena tour of greatest hits and on A new bohemia are in reflective, melancholic mood, men in the 60s looking back to their youths and noticing that the passing of time has seen them moved aside by the new generation. ‘Like silent movie stars in 60s Hollywood/ No one knows who you are in a hipster neighbourhood’, Neil sings noting the invisibility that comes with being old. Later on, as the strings swirl, he confronts mortality and death, ‘Every day is a warning evening might forget/ Then the following morning has the sweet smell of regret’. If Matt Johnson has found something to be hopeful about, Neil Tennant does too by the end of the song. ‘Where are they now? Where have they gone? Who dances now to their song?’, he sings, surrounded in the video by young revellers, Neil and Chris static on the dancefloor. And there is regret too, ‘I wish I lived my life free and easier’, he says before concluding, ‘I’m on my way to a new bohemia’. I don’t know if Neil and Chris are raging at the dying of the light, as Dylan Thomas had it, but they’re going with disco strings, a day at the beach and acceptance of the turning of the wheel, the struggle of the past forty years replaced by something else- contentment maybe, peace of mind. It’s moving stuff. 

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds are back too with a second single from their upcoming album Wild Gods and an arena tour in the autumn. The online fanbase seem a bit split about the new songs- they’re also split about Nick’s music pre- and post the death of Arthur Cave in 2015. Some want Nick to return to the hammering, chaotic Old Testament and murder ballads songs of yore. There’s a feeling that Warren Ellis and the move to a synth dominated sound over the last decade is weaker in comparison to the bone crunching sound of the Bad Seeds of the 90s. Maybe what the long standing fans are really missing is their own youth, their own past in the 90s where a certain amount of chaos and noise was part of life and they were young enough to deal with it. I get why some of the albums Nick’s written since the death of Arthur can be uncomfortable to listen to, difficult to find a way into- I’ve written before about how much I personally get out of Skeleton Tree, Ghosteen and Carnage. Wild Gods so far feels like the first album where the songs aren’t directly about grief and loss (although that will all be in there somewhere I expect), but this one is feeling like Nick’s found a way to get in touch with something else. The song Wild Gods was sung from the point of view of a carouser now living in a retirement home- Nick and Neil Tennant at similar stages in life. The new single Frogs rolls in on rippling piano, cymbals and strings and a fantastic bassline, references Cain and Abel early on, and keeps coming back to walking in the Sunday rain, frogs jumping in gutters, the song building and building, endlessly rising towards something that is ever just out of reach. A choir of backing vocals appear, ahh ahhing away, and Nick sings of being ‘back in the water again’. Kris Kristofferson walks past kicking a can. It’s epic, emotive and uplifting and feels like Nick is choosing life and hope and joy. 

Life Is Much More Simple When You’re Young

Pet Shop Boys played Manchester Arena on Friday night- there aren’t a huge number of groups who can tempt me into arenas but Neil and Chris are one. The tour is billed as Dreamworld, a greatest hits show, and they do not disappoint, hit after hit, song after song, a perfect demonstration of the art and sheer majesty of pop music. Noel Coward’s quote about the potency of cheap music runs through my head a couple of times (not that the Pet Shop Boy’s music comes across as cheap in any way) but it is extraordinarily potent. I’m in tears a couple of times- this keeps happening at gigs at the moment, lines and songs triggering me instantly. So much of a Pet Shop Boys gig/ show is about the stage, the set and the spectacle and there’s plenty of spectacle here tonight but it doesn’t overshadow the songs and ultimately it’s the songs that shine. 

The duo come on to a full, pretty much sold out arena, in big coats and headdresses. They occupy the front third of the stage, a big screen blocking off the rest of the stage. Under a pair of stylised street lamps on wheels, Chris begins prodding his keyboard and Neil takes us straight into Suburbia. The projections behind them are in a constant state of right to left movement giving the set a real sense of motion, the graphics whizzing by as Neil and Chris largely stand still. Suburbia segues into the thumping dance pop of Can You Forgive Her? and without a pause we’re into Opportunities. From thereon in it is clearly going to be nothing but hits, one after the other, usually without any breaks between the songs, a constant seamless flow of words and music. Their cover of U2’s Where The Streets Have No Name lights the place up even further, that sequencer line pumping through the giant barn we’re in sending waves of energy into the crowd and back again. For some songs, Rent (played early on) and West End Girls (much later), the projections become distorted, chopped up versions of the original videos- the young Chris Lowe with naval hat and duffel bag steeping off the train from the Rent video and the pair of them in the streets of London for West End Girls, a moving ode to the passing of time and youth becoming middle age. The quality and range of their back catalogue is so high- one of their 90s peaks, So Hard, is dispensed early on, Chris’ massive rave riff filling the arena and Left To My Own Devices, even bigger than the recorded version with Trevor Horn, that superb line about Che Guevara and Debussy delivered with deadpan aplomb. 

The stage gets opened up for the middle section, the screen raised and three extra musicians waiting for them on risers- drums, percussion and keys- and they’re straight into the latin rhythms crossed with melancholy of Bilingual and Se a vida é (That’s the Way Life Is), the first lump in the throat for me, the line about ‘Se a vida é/ I love you/ Life is much more simple when you’re young’ hitting home. The beautiful Balearic pop of Domino Dancing is followed by some 21st century PSBs- New York City Boy, Monkey Business- and Neil straps on an acoustic guitar for the relationship dissection of You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You’re Drunk. Then we’re slung back to the 80s- Love Comes Quickly and Jealousy. From this point it’s smash hit overload- You Are Always On My Mind, a superb Heart, their wonderful cover of house legend Sterling Void’s It’s Alright, Go West and a climatic It’s A Sin. For the encore the stage is reduced again, the screen leaving the duo at the front. West End Girls, poignantly backlit by their 80s video and then Being Boring, their masterpiece, the projections whooshing from front to back now, lights receding into the distance and Neil’s time shifting lyrics about loss, the passing of time and friendship setting me off again- ‘all the people I was kissing/ Some are here and some are missing… But I thought in spite of dreams you’d be sitting somewhere here with me’. 

Heart

Being Boring (Extended Mix)