The first American tour in almost ten years by the Pet Shop Boys -- still best known on this side of the pond for their 1984 single "West End Girls" -- is an event already treading close to the painful land of Eighties nostalgia. It's a good thing then that the Boys -- singer Neil Tennant and keyboardist/mastermind Chris Lowe -- have always been so much more than one-hit wonders.

At New York's Hammerstein Ballroom on Thursday night, instead of phoning-in tired performances of stale material, Tennant and Lowe staged a show with epic production values and drew heavily from their new album, Nightlife, while hitting the high points of their eighteen-year career. As the lights dimmed to start the show, the sold-out crowd (including Elton John, who was getting jiggy in a box seat with his very large posse) was overwhelmed by two enormous heads -- monstrously-sized projections of Tennant and Lowe in their new look: fake eyebrows, thin sunglasses, blonde spiky wigs -- projected onto a scrim covering the stage. The Boys only dropped the curtain after playing all of "Come On Call Me," Nightlife's opener, hidden behind their head projections.

Less a concert space than a play set, the Boys' stage was designed by U.K. architect Zaha Adid. A modern, deceptively simple curve that dominated the stage and looked something like a Finnish glassware version of the letter "L," the set served as entry and exit ramp, fashion runway, projection screen, lighting rig and all-around drama command center. Every time it was lit a different way or peeled apart and reconfigured, Adid's set made clear that this was more musical theater than rock, a sort of space-age cabaret show from hell.

As Tennant -- in full Nightlife garb -- strolled slowly down his runway, he and Lowe dispensed with the hit quickly, playing a down-tempo version of "West End Girls," one of the few songs in the show that felt forced and insincere.

After finishing the third number, "Discoteca" from 1996's Bilingual, Tennant promised "songs about love, sex, sin, fame and money." He and Lowe -- along with a live percussionist, an offstage keyboardist and five backing singers/dancers -- did just that over the course of twenty-one songs, one intermission and an encore. (The promised songs were "You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk," "Young Offender," "It's a Sin," "Shameless," and "Opportunities [Let's Make Lots of Money]" respectively).

Between the film projections, stage effects (Tennant, in what looked to be a diaphanous raincoat, posed in front of an offstage fan for "Only the Wind") and the dancing backup singers, who looked like human perpetual motion machines, it didn't hurt to remind oneself to pay attention to the music. Since "West End Girls" materialized as a sleeper, and the other early songs in the set drew from the Boys' less well-known Nineties work, the crowd didn't really pop until Tennant introduced the late, great Dusty Springfield, who was projected larger than both life and legend on Adid's set for the duet "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" That number was immediately followed by Nightlife's second single, "New York City Boy," an irresistible, fat house number on the theme of urban gay liberation, which drove the hometown crowd nuts and put the venue's dance floor to good use. Tennant's four black male backing singers donned Naval uniforms and gyrated behind him during the song, giving the whole number a "Neil Tennant and the Pips" vibe. Other highlights included two songs with Tennant on -- shockingly enough -- acoustic guitar, the spiky-sequencer laden "Left to My Own Devices" and "It's a Sin," during which Tennant's Pips proved themselves the most-gyrating things in choir robes this side of the Mason-Dixon line.

Despite some slow, balladic and relatively unknown song choices, which kept dimming crowd energy, the Boys proved that, above all else, they are smart masters of dumb genres; they do nothing better than turn Eurodisco, house and electro-pop on their ears, while celebrating them at the same time.

And for just a second there, when Tennant strode out into the audience and drove them ape-shit while calling for sing-alongs during their cover of Elvis' "Always on My Mind," the Pet Shop Boys even looked a little bit like rock stars.

HARRY THOMAS
(November 12, 1999)