Very few successful chart acts (over 30 Top 20 hit singles in the past 15 years) are this good. Mixing high brow, arched eyebrow pop with a virtually irresistible Kraftwerkian hi-energy dance format and dreamscape pop, the low attendance at this concert might suggest that the halcyon days of Pet Shop Boys are gone. If that's the case then Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe are putting up one hell of a fight.
Apparently far less a theatrical outing than their previous visit to Ireland at the beginning of the decade, this was still a fine audio-visual show: ringing-ear loud, sleek pyramidic stage sets, enough beats to fill rave tents world-wide and Neil Tennant wearing the Official Worst Wig Ever Worn By A Pop Star.
Anyone searching for obvious signs of the band's trademark irony would have had to use a powerful set of binoculars on Sunday night, for Tennant was conspicuously avuncular. Lashings of camp, however, were well and truly delivered. From Village People-style back-up singers in sailor suits (very salty, indeed) to glorious Diva (Sylvia Mason-James), and from Gilbert & George iconography to Neil Tennant in a voluminous pleated grey skirt, this was HMS Gay in dry dock, ready willing and able for a full, vigorous refit.
The songs (all the hits and more) were gems, too: West End Girls, What Have I Done To Deserve This, Always On My Mind, Left To My Own Devices, New York City Boy, Being Boring, You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk ("our song for the Millennium" says Tennant), It's A Sin and a blow-out finale of Go West.
They've had their lean years and undistinguished years (including a scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel Comic Relief single) but all in all, Pet Shop Boys prove that smart, insightful words and gloriously dumb music can be used intelligently, humorously and provocatively. Wouldn't it be great if it was like this all the time?
