Pet Shop Boys show their pristine craft in new electro-pop album infused with melancholia

Fast forward to January 1986, and a more effervescent version, produced by Stephen Hague, fared very differently. West End Girls became a UK number one and soon attained classic status. It was named as the greatest British chart-topper ever by a poll of several Guardian critics a few years back. It put the duo on the road to being pop royalty with enviable longevity.

“Here today, built to last,” goes one of the song’s celebrated lyrics and how prophetic those words would be when it comes to Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe.

They’re now on album number 15. Nonetheless — a quintessential PSB title — has its roots in the pandemic. Mercifully, only one track directly references that grim period. Why Am I Dancing? is a celebration of dancing at home, alone, when all the pubs and clubs were shuttered. It could hardly have been more different to anything on their previous album, Hotspot, which revelled in the joys of German nightlife (they have a studio in Berlin.)

An air of melancholia permeates immaculately arranged electro-pop songs, produced by Simian Mobile Disco and sometime Arctic Monkeys studio boffin James Ford. A wistful, gentle collection, these are songs that that allow Tennant, now 69, and the band’s lyrics maven, to look back. New London Boy is highly autobiographical and traces the story of the singer trading an early life in Newcastle for the bright lights of the English capital.

There’s remarkable craft throughout, especially on the pristine album opener, Loneliness, in which the subject of that title is tackled, but not in a prosaic way. As ever, synths are vital, but violins and cellos compete for attention too.

After a strong start, the album’s second half is distinctly weaker, but half a dozen songs are worthy of any PSB playlist.

St Vincent — aka Annie Clark — makes music that confounds expectations and so it is with her arresting seventh album All Born Screaming. Self-produced and wilfully eclectic, it is the sound of an artist knocking down boundaries.

Big Time Nothing begins as a funky, sloganeering song that will remind some of U2’s Numb, before mutating into a retro-futuristic disco number redolent of Grace Jones in her pomp.

A beautiful song, Sweetest Fruit, is an ode to Sophie, the Scottish musician and producer who died after a fall in 2021.

There are several collaborators, including Dave Grohl on drums and Cate Le Bon, who lends her vocals to the title track that closes the album.