Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 22/05/06
Label: EMI

The queens are not dead. Given that the last new material from Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe was a brainy score to the film "Battleship Potemkin", we could be forgiven for fearing the dour duo had cast their glittery hotpants aside for a new diet of early nights in with "Gramophone" magazine. Yet "Fundamental" is the sound of the Pet Shop Boys reborn, and mindful of the important role they fill in the pop family - namely, the only songwriters capable of working the word "mandate" into a hedonistic disco track without it having anything whatsoever to do with a romantic rendezvous between two gentlemen.

Back are the pumping glitterball-shaking beats; bubbling, spiky synths à la Giorgio Moroder balanced by smooth strings; arch, clipped lyrics and delivery; the quintessentially PSB tone of late night urban woe, of educated chaps caught between Chinawhites and Chekhov. No adventurous collaborations with hot young producers either - there's Trevor Horn working his chinos-clad magic at the helm. Blimey, you think, all we need now is good old Anne 'Art Of Noise' Dudley and it'll be like an '80s electropop reunion. Hang on, Anne Dudley IS here! Arranging the brass on track 11!

For all opening cut "Psychological"'s dark, Kraftwerkian stylings, the overall sound is resolutely perky. The camp-as-its-title "The Sodom & Gomorrah Show" opens with blasts of clown music and a circus ringleader's voice promising "sun, sex, sin, divine intervention, death and destruction" before switching, via a gloriously cheesy synth cascade, into a dancefloor-cum-aerobics workout with a fantastic singalong chorus and echoes of "Together In Electric Dreams" - think Sally Bowles meets Odyssey in Faliraki.

More theatrics in "I Made My Excuses & Left", a jealousy ballad underscored by a mournful cello melody and featuring the splendidly tragic line "In the crowded courts of your love I was now a supplicant." Saucy, melodramatic saga "Casanova In Hell" is something the Divine Comedy might have written a decade ago. The Diane Warren-penned "Numb" and companion slowie "Luna Park" drag things down mid-disc, but the final third of the album is blistering, with Tennant and Lowe marching into the political fray banners aloft.

The sassy "I'm With Stupid", even though apparently inspired by Bush and Blair, is positively tame compared to "Twentieth Century"'s bass-heavy critique of New Labour. "Indefinite Leave To Remain" sees Tennant stepping into the shoes of an asylum seeker (although with lines like "Tell me where I stand..." it's doubtless an analogy for a relationship, too). Finally, stomping finale "Integral" is about ID cards, a futuristic Orwellian scenario that was just begging to be turned into an apocalyptic disco number by someone. "Perfect" purrs Tennant breathlessly, his last word of the song, and the album.

Well - pretty close.

    by Anna Britten