Pet Shop Boys – Ultimate

Those darling Pet Shop Boys. Twenty five years have elapsed since the release of their debut, but somehow they seem to have escaped being tagged in any way as 80’s icons. Not for them the revival circuit, recycling their hits in front of a “Freedom” t-shirt clad crowd. Instead, Tennant and Lowe have been raised above all this, somehow wiser and cooler than their peers. They have also been productive, their tenth album “Yes” seeing the light of day in early 2009.

But haven’t we been here before? As pointless releases go, this one certainly earns it place on the medal podium. This is their third greatest hits album in the UK, and it’s a shame it is such a shoddy collection as 2003’s “PopArt – The Hits” really showed the world how a great singles compendium can be done. A two sided album, it featured the more commercial singles on one CD, with the more experimental tracks on the other, providing as comprehensive assessment of their output as you could possibly get. New release “Ultimate” is the opposite, a rather shallow collection that barely scratches the surface of their glorious career.

We all realise the limitations. To cram a 25 year career into 80 minutes of disc space is no mean feat, especially when you have to concede to the obligatory new song. But there are lots of sad omissions here and a few inclusions that make you wonder what they where thinking as they sat their with the back catalogue spread about them, making the decisions. To distil such a long and glorious career in this manner waters down their enormous influence, ignoring much of what made Pet Shop Boys so wonderful.

There is a massive saving grace though. It is best not to think of this as a CD with a bonus DVD, but rather to view it the other way round. The attached DVD is wonderful, and would have been attractive had it just included their recent Glastonbury performance. However, they also added a myriad of television performances, showcasing some of the tracks that did not make it onto Ultimate itself. It is here you sense some of their enigmatic power, how keenly they matched the visual with the music.

It is at times a curious jog through the ages, from Tennant looking stiff and uncomfortable in a hairy suit miming along to ‘Rent’, to a deranged looking Dusty Springfield stamping about at the Brits. What is curious though is how on occasions they almost appear as if time travellers, out of place amid the 80’s trash of the Top of the Pops studio and the pastel coloured revellers. As the years pass, they become more driven by statements in art, Lowe a cone-headed explorer for ‘Can You Forgive Her?’ while Tennant sits a stepladder, to the dyed hair experiments for their performances earlier this decade. Highlights of the Glastonbury set include a spine-tingling ‘Two Divided By Zero’ and ‘Being Boring’, personal and confessional, some of the greatest lyrics ever composed set to utterly gorgeous music.

It is a shame that the powers that be have decided to market this release in this way. It would have been way better if they had concentrated on the DVD release, ignoring the CD entirely, bolstering the content with the band’s music videos and other selected live performances. Unfortunately, by being sticky-taped to a rather lack-lustre singles collection, the DVD gets rather left by the wayside. Sadly, what we see here are wasted opportunities.