Released: June 16
For their latest singles collection, Pet Shop Boys go all-out with an epic 55-song voyage through their decades-spanning catalogue.
Covering a 35-year period between 1985 and 2020, ‘SMASH – The Singles’ works chronologically through the duo’s classic output, opening with their debut hit West End Girls and journeying through 2020’s Monkey Business.
Coinciding with the final dates on the band’s ‘Dreamworld’ run of greatest hits shows, the set sees Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe “take stock and bring together every single we’ve released,” with the running order showcasing the consistency of the duo’s output in five separate decades.
Offering the most comprehensive retrospective of the synth-pop duo’s work to date, ‘SMASH’ represents all 14 Pet Shop Boy albums along with standalone releases such as former B-side, Paninaro ’95, and their version of the Stephen Sondheim classic, Somewhere. Where appropriate, all the singles are 7” remixes or edits.
Although expansive, there are notable omissions, including How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously? from Behaviour (1991), while later singles such as Axis, Undertow and Burning The Heather are also missing, along with the 1994 Top 10 Absolutely Fabulous and the duo’s own recording of the PSB-penned Alcazar original Love Life.
For an act so prolific, there was always going to be compromise and when it comes to the tracklist, the material that makes the final cut offers a varied selection of the group’s most acclaimed output – both commercially and critically – while encompassing their entire career.
Alongside the audio, select physical editions of ‘SMASH’ collect the duo’s videos on Blu-Ray for the first time, with a second disc containing bonus clips and lyric videos (including songs not featured on the audio tracklist), with a bumper 66 visuals presented in total.
The remastered videos especially are a treat to behold, particularly from an act like Pet Shop Boys, for whom the image has always gone hand-in-hand with the music and serves to enhance the overall experience.
It’s a sentiment brought together in the artwork; suitably abstract, the set – which combines imagery from across the decades into a spectrum representative of Neil and Chris’ work – is beautifully presented and a fitting tribute to the career of two of synth-pop’s finest.
With work underway on an album of new material, spotlighting such an epic catalogue at this point is a bold move – but based on recent offerings, almost 40 years in and Pet Shop Boys are still producing some of the best material of their career.
