Every artist who sticks around will have their output sorted into two categories: works that conform to the defining characteristics of their dominant style, and works that don’t. Arguably the world’s most self-aware pop act, Pet Shop Boys have preemptively done much of the sorting themselves, giving their albums names like Very and Fundamental, as in Very Pet Shop Boys. Recorded with hip-hop knob-twiddler Andrew Dawson, last year’s Elysium might as well have been titled Not Enough and Too Much, as it combines some of the duo’s lightest and least dance-inducing rhythms with lyrics that either revealed little of Neil Tennant’s trademark wit or laid it on so thickly that they suggested self-parody.

Co-produced by Madonna/Killers collaborator and obvious PSB acolyte Stuart Price, Electric began as a project featuring songs deemed too dance-y for Elysium and then evolved into a full album of mostly lengthy cuts akin to the duo’s clubbiest discs like Introspective or Disco. Its first track and single “Axis” feeds its minimal poetry through various vocoders; its last track and second single, “Vocal,” conversely comments, “Every song has a vocal and that makes a change.”

The seven songs in between are mostly quintessential Pets, which is to say they… read more »