BBC Review
The textbook example of how brilliant a pop debut could be
Ian Wade 2009-07-08
Pet Shop Boys: for over 25 years, they've been a very brilliant pop thing. From the artwork, to their outlook, image and, handily, literally quite good ability with tunes, they created an intelligence and panache that has seen them become one of the most successful duos of all time. Not for nothing did they once describe themselves as ''The Smiths you can dance to''. And it was only right they picked up an Outstanding Services To Music gong at the 2009 Brits.
Originally released in 1986, Please was the first great British pop album of the post-Live Aid era when everything else had turned a bit ugly, bloated and Bono. Having met in an electronics shop off the Kings Road, Chris Lowe and one-time Smash Hits writer Neil Tennant took their inspiration from the early 80s dance music emanating from New York, combining a very English sensibility with hi-NRG dimensions, and having seen his fair share of casualties on Planet Pop, Tennant took all the best bits to make sure they wouldn't be veering too near the dumper any time soon.
Alongside the peerless worldwide chart-topping West End Girls, there were delights galore to be found: Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money) is the ultimate Thatcherism statement made danceable; Love Comes Quickly shimmers magnificently and is possibly one of the more overlooked singles in their catalogue. Surburbia may sound a little weedier than the later single version but is still a top pop moment. Even the non-singles such as the opening Two Divided By Zero (recently beefed-up live with a touch of the Shannon about it) still sounds of the moment; Tonight Is Forever is almost Broadway-esque; the ballad Later Tonight has the calm of a post-evening cab ride home and closer Why Don't We Live Together is a celebratory arms aloft marvel. All tremendous.
Within 18 months Tennant & Lowe would be tossing out number ones, resurrecting Dusty Springfield and releasing Actually, a more refined version of what this debut offered, but aside from one or two cultural references and the odd dated synth, Please really hasn't dated at all and should be the textbook example of how brilliant a pop debut could be. Amazing.
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Apart from Violence (which is garbage) and Opportunities (reprise)(which isn't a track at all - more a 80's bit of pompus con/crap) this has got to be the best album of 1986.
Most albums date. This hasn't, much. It's fab. Opportunities is more relevant now than ever. Brilliant.
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Great to see this album recognized, coming recently after the release of 'Yes', which marks a continuation of the Pets' fantastic career.
'Actually' may have been more polished, but 'Please' always contained fantastic pop songs that are still listenable: 'Love Comes Quickly' = one of the best love songs ever released!
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This is without doubt the best PSB work ever.This album has everything, songs of joy, despair, repression, running away, riots, violence, dreams, freedom, and hope of finding true love,The whole album hinges on the expectation of hope everlasting, and that eventually everything turns out fine, That better things lie ahead.This masterpiece is a great mirror of life, this is Tennant at his intellectual best, casting his eye over life and its trials & tribulations, and he puts his life experiences into it, and that against the backdrop of a mundane life and repressive life, that some how you can win through.Sadly the next album Actually had only glimpses of brilliance which Please embodied throughout, from then on the PSB were on a gradual curve down.They became commercialised and camp, where image overtook content.But on a high note Please is one of the most outstanding intellectual works of all time, up their with Lennon and Dylan plus other legends.
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Any electro-pop album with an opening track that samples a Speak & Spell calculator, a supermarket till and a train station announcer deserves a vertically directed opposable thumb in my book. Classic PSB!
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