Pet Shop Boys review – no hits? No problem on first night of a masterful obscurities run
The era-defining duo’s ultras are suitably spoiled in the first of this intimate five-day run, showered with rarities that put a different spin on their well-known history
‘Tonight …” says Neil Tennant, with a suave pause, “no hits!” The crowd roars. “B-sides?” he teases. “Album tracks! And what we’re calling – although really it’s both of those – fan favourites.” It is a rare gig when the singer of a history-defining pop band can promise that no one will be hearing some of the best songs of all time tonight – West End Girls, Always on My Mind, Rent, to name some of several dozen – and get a hero’s welcome. But Pet Shop Boys have been on their Dreamworld greatest hits tour since 2022, one that’s barely even made room for their excellent and underrated 2024 album Nonetheless on the set list, let alone many wildcards. The Pet Shop Boys casual has been lavishly fatted in recent years. The Pet Shop Boys ultra, however, has been a little parched.
It’s something this five-day run of intimate shows at Camden’s Electric Ballroom seeks to remedy, drawing from the band’s margins to promote a new tome on their highly intentional visual history: in typical one-word fashion, the tour is called Obscure. Tennant and synths foil Chris Lowe announced beforehand that they had rehearsed 35 possible songs from their 42-year run, but their enduring commitment to the single format, with its considered B-sides and remixes, makes the possibilities endless: one fan compiled a pre-game playlist of 226 “B-sides and non-singles”, and doubted even then that it was comprehensive. Tennant has a tray containing the lyrics – fair play, given that two songs tonight have never been played before, while others are getting their first trip out of the cupboard in decades.
At such close quarters, you can see Tennant’s delight at the band being so deeply known. He is visibly chuffed at the singalong for 2020’s Will-o-the-Wisp, his snarl at the end of each line as inimitable a vocal styling as the late Mark E Smith’s -ah appendix; nods like all is right in the world when the crowd yell and point “zero! zero! zero!” for Two Divided by Zero, the opening track from their 1986 debut Please. Phones pop up to capture history being made when Suburbia B-side Jack the Lad (also 1986) gets its first ever live airing, a wistful, cheeky tale of a ne’er do well caught between caution and temptation.
It’s the softer songs that steal the show tonight – the thumpers a bit too much of a reminder of their more sparkling A-side sisters tantalisingly out of reach – as the band reveal the tender underbelly often hidden behind their pop armour. The humid, fizzing To Face the Truth (1990) makes disappointment practically sensual – the closest Tennant gets to soul boy is the way he holds a hand over his stomach and closes his eyes in the chorus. The close, febrile Do I Have To? (1987) is the sound of fatally yielding to mistreatment you know you should refuse, and features some of Lowe’s loveliest ever piano. King of Rome (2009) practically coats the skin, Tennant’s voice close as steam amid an enveloping horn refrain.
At points, Tennant comes off like an urbane gameshow host, quizzing the crowd on B-side provenance and demonstrating the Pets’ exacting grasp on their own trivia: a medley of 1993’s One in a Million and Culture Beat’s Mr Vain, the last of a fabulous three-song run with their storied backing vocalist Sylvia Mason-James, resplendent in Miyake’s Pleats Please, is its first outing “since Latin America in 1994!” Concluding the main set, 2005’s The Performance of My Life reminds them of the “wonderful old-school drag queens” they’d see in a “very sleazy” nearby pub on breaks from their earliest recording sessions: it’s their My Way or Maybe This Time, a darkly glassy refrain underpinning the way hope evanesces in Tennant’s every line.
Pet Shop Boys make a precision art of archiving, though the peppered and unpredictable pockets of crowd reaction to each song hint at the infinite personal histories embodied within a set like this. All these songs are on streaming now, but many of them were once secreted away as the flip sides to much-loved 7ins: you think of how many of the faithful must have sat in their teenage bedrooms seeking solace in repeat spins of It’s Alright B-side Your Funny Uncle (1989), a lament to a friend lost to Aids. Perhaps their most beloved obscurity, it opens the encore, Tennant playing softly gorgeous solo piano that creates a heart-rending contrast of timeless end-of-the-pier romance against a none-more contemporary tragedy.
They’re aware of all the time that’s passed between us – “I can still sing that note,” a pleased Tennant says of the piercing “bay-beh!” of 1986’s Why Don’t We Live Together? – but still looking forward. The last song, I Dream of a Better Tomorrow, has never been heard before, taken from Naked, their unreleased stage show based on The Emperor’s New Clothes, and hails “change is coming … the start of something new”. The Dreamworld tour rolls on, with 10 dates set for the summer, but you’d hope this week’s confident, surprising run might remind them of the rejuvenating potential of telling a different story every night.