_:n336047b736a643c9b1e0a3a96f1f6a6fxb4
<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" “Five decades? No,” Neil Tennant splutters incredulously down the phone from London. The singer of the best-selling British duo of all-time, the Pet Shop Boys, Tennant has worked with the likes of Elton John, David Bowie, Dusty Springfield, Lady Gaga, Madonna and Liza Minnelli but when I tell him that the release of Hotspot today, January 24, will mean the group has made albums in five decades, he is almost lost for words. Almost. The usually garrulous and always erudite Tennant quickly counts out the decades and then does something unexpected. He swears. “F...ing hell. Five decades, it just hadn’t occurred to me.” “Don’t tell Chris,” I say. “He’ll be absolutely appalled.” “Actually, Chris won’t be interested,” Tennant counters with a laugh. Chris Lowe is the other half of a musical duo responsible for album sales of 120 million, 44 top-30 singles and hits such as West End Girls, Always On My Mind, It’s A Sin, Go West and What Have I Done to Deserve This?. He writes hooky melodies, stands motionless in hat and sunglasses behind his keyboard on stage and adopts a rather flippant attitude to the ongoing success of the Pet Shop Boys. He may be a clothes horse but he’s an unlikely pop star, especially now at 60. Hotspot is the 14th studio album from the duo once dubbed by the press Mr Posh and Mr Grumpy, and when the name was announced, it had the Pet Shop Boys’ hardcore fan base in conniptions. Had the boys deviated from their career-long preference for one-word album titles? “It’s one word. I looked it up in the dictionary,” Tennant says. I tell him, as a sub-editor, I think he’s right. “I used to be a sub-editor, too,” he exclaims. Tennant had in fact risen to editor of renowned teen music mag Smash Hits when he left to start making music with architecture student Lowe in 1985. A mock obituary appeared in the magazine insisting that he’d return on bended knee begging for his old job back by the next edition. A recipe of sophisticated lyrics set to a melange of sometimes euphoric, at other times melancholic dance music gave them massive worldwide success and no need for day jobs. At 65, Tennant has never been busier with the Hotspot era in full swing. The album is a masterpiece of melody with Tennant brilliantly encapsulating in four-minute gems tales of suburban love affairs, urban trysts, a mid-life crisis, lonely teens and even, in the groove track and next single Monkey Business, an over-the-top Texan playboy. Mostly recorded in Berlin, it’s the third of a trio of albums produced with Stuart Price, who’s also worked with Madonna and Kylie Minogue and calls it the best album he’s ever made. Of the three, it’s Tennant’s favourite. “As ever, we wrote quite a lot of songs,” he says. “It seemed to take a very long time to make. It has a flavour of Berlin, we recorded it at Hansa Studios and we wanted to get a different sound. The last two albums were very digital, sort of hyper dance pop and this one we wanted to sound a bit more murky, really, that’s why we chose the photograph on the cover, because we keep saying to people, ‘it’s what the album sounds like’.” The duo continued on the recent tack of Tennant writing lyrics then sending them to Lowe, who’d put music to them. “Sometimes I just write a lyric, like a poem, and I put a load of them into one PDF and emailed it to Chris just in case he felt like setting them to music — quite often, Chris just sits at home writing music, and to my delight, by the next time we were together in Berlin, he’d already written the music to about five of them.” Hotspot has echoes of the past — the beautiful Only the Dark, which reminds Tennant of Madonna’s Live to Tell, sounds like it would fit snugly on 1990’s Behaviour, while rollicking opener Will-o-the-Wisp — a lament about a mercurial young love interest who has slipped through Tennant’s fingers, shares the hi-NRG euphoria of Please (1985). The track has a filmic quality evoked by the sound sampling of underground train stations, which the boys used to great effect in the 80s. Tennant says that’s a reflection of the inspiration they feel in the German capital and something they wanted to brand into the album. “On Will-o-the-Wisp, you’re on the underground,” he says. “We actually sampled the journey that’s in the lyrics from Uhland to Warschauer Strasse. We went with Stuart and a tape recorder on the U1 but unfortunately, as would have happened in London, we actually lost the train and had to use the replacement bus for a bit. “Sometimes Chris likes to work at midnight. I remember one night we went out, came back and I did vocals, some of which are still on Will-o-the-Wisp and I think you can tell I’ve had a few drinks!” On I Don’t Wanna, Tennant says he tapped into his inner Madonna. “That’s why it’s not sung in an English accent or called I Don’t Want To — it’s I Don’t Wannaaaaaa,” he sings to me, Queen of Pop style. Although the Pet Shop Boys are about to embark on their umpteenth world tour, don’t expect to see Hotspot live. Dreamworld will have a set list somehow whittled down from the boys’ 58 singles. Many will be substantially remixed but all will retain the irresistible catchiness that made them hits. Tennant says Perth will be added to a schedule that includes Europe, the US, South America and Asia. And the odds are they’ll headline Glastonbury again. But make no mistake, this isn’t a farewell. The Pet Shop Boys are just having too much fun. “There’s no creative reason for us not to continue,” Tennant says, “and I think it comes across on the album; this is two people doing something they really enjoy.” Hotspot is released today."
<https://thewest.com.au/entertainment/music/pet-shop-boys-release-latest-album-hotspot-plan-to-bring-their-tour-to-perth-ng-b881436266z>