Pet Shop Boys
Very

THE REVIEW

It seems like yesterday when I first listened to 'Very'. It was 1993 and I was only 6 years old. I remember saving money from buying ice creams and after a week, I bought the cassette.

I listened to that tape so many times that within a few years I managed to convert my classmates (who were listening to D'Avena's music at the time) to the pop universe of the '80s and early '90s. But what struck me about that album?

I should preface by saying there are only three albums that I've been listening to for about 12 years and that I’m still not tired of putting on the Walkman: "Low Life" (New Order), "Speak and Spell" (Depeche Mode), and indeed the '93 album by the Psb.

At an unprejudiced listen, Very might seem "superficial" in production, as almost all the songs follow the same rhythm, which could be considered a remarkable step back compared to the previous "Behaviour" (1990). But this was exactly the intention of the two Boys, to return to the rhythms that made them famous in the '80s, borrowing pop melodies from "Please" and disco beats from "Introspective". Songs like "Can you forgive here?", "A different point of view", "One and one make five", and "Go west" (a cover of a Village People hit) don't differ much in form or substance from the sound that made them famous in past years. Furthermore, it must be noted that from 1990 to 1994, the dominant genre in the musical scene (especially in the U.S.) was rock, with bands like Nirvana ("Nevermind", "Incesticide"), U2 ("Zooropa"), and Depeche Mode ("Violator", "Songs of Faith and Devotion") contributing to making Grunge a mass phenomenon.

And this is where the Psb most stand out, creating an album with driving pop rhythms (almost banal) but which in reality conceal a satire about the society of the time, and the corresponding videos reflect this idea, with costumes worthy of Devo and rather ambiguous movements (see the video for "Can you forgive her?"). The two Boys retreat into their shell and from within, they see all those groups who, wanting to keep up with the times, "renounce" the pop works done in the '80s and venture to the other shore, exemplary are groups like Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, who to remain at the top of the charts "bastardized" their original sound in favor of an electro-rock, criticized by many. Many people argue that in some way this affected the decline of the Psb (which began right after the release of 'Very'), Tennant and Lowe have always been faithful to their distinctive sound, and one way or another they rejected the musical update that was happening in those years ('Very' is a clear testament to this), and in the future, this greatly affected their album sales. Ultimately, the '93 album was the last album to achieve a certain success with both critics and the public, an album to which I am very attached for various reasons.

I apologize for not being very thorough in talking about the album in question. I limited myself to giving an overview of the musical world of that period, but I believe that if you want to fully understand the musical art of the two Boys, you need to listen to the album with your mind focused on its historical-musical context, only then can you understand certain nuances present in the songs of the duo.