Pet Shop Boys review — high-end, hit-packed pop spectacle
Hardcore Pet Shop Boys fans online are ambivalent about this latest run of dates, with some accusing Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe of milking an overfamiliar show. Launched in 2022, Dreamworld has become the longest tour in the veteran electro-pop duo's four-decade career, expanding into an epic Elton John-sized odyssey accompanied by a greatest hits collection, a concert film and a new studio album, Nonetheless. With its mostly fixed set list, their second visit to Cardiff in three years was certainly low on surprises but still hard to fault as high-end, hit-packed pop spectacle.
Tennant recently defined the cast-iron formula for a successful pop career as having nine enduring anthems that people love. The Pet Shop Boys have at least twice that number, which helps to explain why the 71-year-old singer is still headlining huge arenas while many of his former chart peers are retired, forgotten or relegated to cheesy retro festival bills. Crucially, he and Lowe have also consistently refreshed their sound and arrangements over the decades. A dynamic, young live band joined the duo for most of this set, enhancing the songs with extra vocal layers, strong percussive elements and a dash of youthful glamour.
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Inevitably, the Cardiff crowd's loudest reactions were mostly reserved for songs from the duo's late 1980s commercial peak, including a roaringly dramatic Left to My Own Devices, the stormy Wagnerian melodrama of It's a Sin and a silky-voiced West End Girls. But standout numbers also included more recent classics such as Vocal, a rapturous serotonin rush of rave-pop euphoria released in 2013, and last year's A New Bohemia, a mighty orchestral ballad suffused with a misty-eyed yearning for Beatles-era London that Oasis might envy.
The Dreamworld stage and costume designs by Tom Scutt, fêted for his work at the ENO and National Theatre, remain reliably dazzling. Tennant's outfit changes were especially fun in Cardiff, and he was clearly relishing his metamorphosis from a sinister folkloric beast in a tuning-fork mask to a silver-robed supervillain to a manically grinning game show host. That said, the overall staging felt more conventional than the duo's previous tours, notably those involving their former long-term collaborator Es Devlin. By downplaying their surreal, arty, theatrical side, the Pet Shop Boys may be playing it safe in their autumn years but they still deliver a unique blend of wry sophistication and pure pop joy live. It's not quite a nostalgia act, more like a smart, self-aware, witty commentary on nostalgia.★★★★☆
Sandringham House, Norfolk, Aug 14; Hardwick Live Festival, Durham, Aug 16; Warwick Castle, Aug 30, petshopboys.co.uk
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