Concert Review: Pet Shop Boys

I saw the Pet Shop Boys one week ago tonight. Like my last live show, it was one where I ended up having many deep thoughts.

I need to be clear that it was a great show. They sounded really good, played a wide variety of songs, and the crowd loved them. I was surprised to hear vocalist Neil Tennant say that this was their first time in Portland, but there were a lot of bands who went straight from Seattle to California back in the day. I do know the guy next to me said this was the one band that had eluded him, so I guess that had not helped.

Probably a lot of the fans had been waiting a long time for this. The Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall was packed, and responded enthusiastically the entire time. When Tennant and keyboardist Chris Lowe appeared, the crowd rose to their feet en masse, and pretty much stayed there the entire time. They chanted for "Go West", and got it. This was a happy crowd. There was no opening act, and none was needed.

I referred to the band appearing. The way the show started was that there was a screen with various types of tunnels and portals projected onto it, then with glimpses of two men in the middle, and suddenly you could see through the screen, and Tennant and Lowe were behind it, in tall pointed hats and thick feathery suits.

The first two songs were performed behind that screen. There were eventually costume changes. Tennant switched to a blazer much sooner than Lowe got out of the feathers, and in time they switched to shiny silver, and then orange with Tennant in a fez. What never changed was that there were always many visual effects, and that the stage almost constantly had two dancers on it.

The dancers were quite good. In addition to doing basic dancing with large horned masks (that must have been quite heavy) on their heads, they also jumped on pogo sticks while covered in something like silver Christmas tree suits, and moved with arm and leg stilts. As amazing as they were, I'm just not sure it related.

At first, they looked like two minotaurs, but then it seemed like the cattle heads were specifically skulls, and as they switched from less clothing to suits, I thought it could perhaps represent something about urbanization or Yuppie-fication, but no, it never seemed to really connect to the music, except maybe in terms of rhythm. Otherwise, it probably would have made more sense to use the houses on "Suburbia".

For a while I was thinking that the band would be behind the screen the entire time, and that didn't happen, but there was still always the imagery and the dancers. It occurred to me that would be a really cool dance club. The club would cost less to get into, but then there would probably be overpriced drinks. (I don't really know much about nightlife.) This was very different from other concerts that I have gone to.

I was thinking about whether it is a difference between rock and pop, or between keyboards and guitars, with perhaps one being inherently more connected, and I don't know. A-ha was synth pop, and was very present. Duran Duran had a lot of spectacle, but not that much. I guess some of my thinking was because what counts as pop now and what counted as pop then feels very different.

I really don't have the answers here. The other thing that came to mind is that as I was trying to do more listening to the Pet Shop Boys, both before and after the concert, it was very frustrating trying to find the songs. There were so many compilations of remixes and 12-inch and I ended up just gong for the videos, because at least they felt like what I remembered.

It's different from my usual, I guess, which is not bad. I enjoyed the concert, and the crowd loved it. It was just different.

http://www.petshopboys.co.uk/