TENNANT/LOWE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN ALBUM EMI RELEASE: SEPTEMBER 5, 2005 REVIEW: SEPTEMBER 22, 2005

Take note, young pop rascals. Time will not stop, the creases in your faces will deepen. There is just no fighting it. I think Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have realised that the hard way. Pet Shop Boys have been displaying signs of midlife crisis during this new millennium, but the battle has been resolved with dignity, the silly hats at least temporarily replaced by somber grandeur and what looks to me like the ideal retirement plan for perhaps the only British pop band worth taking seriously.

PSB does not treat silent film with the careful respect of In the Nursery, but neither do they diffuse the score with their own presence. The new soundtrack for this Soviet film classic melds larger-than-life strings and slavic melancholy with stylish beats and, here and there, Tennant urging the oppressed to break their chains in his exquisitely restrained and dreamy vocals. I can't help my hairs standing on end when, with the help of Torsten Rasch who has previously given Rammstein the philharmonic treatment, the suburban grace of PSB meets battering symphonic propaganda in the style of Laibach. Yet Tennant and Lowe bring an additional level of complexity, a sort of calm and, again, dignity into the orchestrated storm, which elevates this piece of work above both of the aforementioned bands.

I have not seen "Battleship Potemkin" (except for the baby cart scene), but the mostly instrumental album works just fine without it. Hopefully the huge success of the live performance of this piece in London last year has given the boys incentive to go on branching out into interesting areas rather than trying to rekindle bygone glories. More musicals, an opera, perhaps ballet? Count me in.

MATTIAS HUSS