I came across a cache of old photos and invitations to teenage parties
Continuing my trip back through the 1990 album charts.
04/11/90 : Behaviour - Pet Shop Boys
Pet Shop Boys are one of those groups that there's nothing wrong with most of their albums, but also nothing to make you want to listen to them instead of their best-of. I've never listened to (or owned - 4/9) this one and looking at the track titles, I only recognise one of them so I can't say my expectations are very high.
Hmmm - it's all fine, but very downbeat. Not depressingly so, but everything is just very underplayed. If I felt like being harsh, I'd say that opening the album with "Being Boring" was appropriate - but I think I'll merely settle for saying they were certainly tempting fate. I actually knew two of the tracks beforehand - as well as "Being Boring" (which I did remember) there was also "So Hard", which I'd completely forgotten about. Apparently it got to #4 in the UK - they had a run of ten top 10 singles between '86 and '90, which included three #1s. And a lot of those singles were fantastic creations - and there's just very little evidence of that on this album.
We're at a relatively high #6 in the charts this week on their second week of a fourteen week run, with it having debuted at #2. The top five were Elton John, The Beautiful South (both new entries), Paul Simon, a Status Quo best-of (seriously?) and The Three Tenors and the next highest new entry were The Travelling Wilburys (#14). Amusingly, Elton has had nine greatest hits albums charts over the years but he does seem to be content to call it a day with Diamonds which is currently enjoying a 310 week run (and it's at #16, so it isn't going anywhere in a hurry!).
Wikipedia tells me this album was produced by Harold Faltermeyer because they wanted to use analogue synthesisers and the man knows analogue! Johnny Marr and Angelo Badalementi were also involved - they were calling on their talented mates, weren't they? Apparently the plan was to make an upbeat album but somehow that didn't work out - one of the critics on George Michael's previous entry said that maybe him and the PSBs were affected by the impact of AIDS on the gay community but I suspect that's a somewhat reductive answer. The critics either liked its downbeat nature or wondered where the energy was - our old mate Robert Christgau fell back on his old favourite of "likable effort that consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well enjoy" (ie if you like it, you like it). It did pretty well globally though - top ten in quite a few European countries.
"Customers also listened to" Soft Cell, Jean-Michel Jarre, Electronic and New Order - which is quite a peculiar mix. I didn't mind this album and I recognise the songs are well crafted but it was a bit subdued for me, particularly when compared to other PSB offerings.
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