Here's a lovely exchange in the Guardian's new interview with the Pet Shop Boys, who, nearing sixty, and after selling 100 million records worldwide, have just released a new album, with another one up their sleeve:
"We're not embarrassed to confront age. There's the paradox of making pop music when you're in your 50s. People weren't meant to be doing that originally and yet they are. Mick Jagger [used to say] we're not going to be doing Satisfaction when I'm in a wheelchair," – Neil Tennant.
"Although it would be quite an appropriate song to sing," – Chris Lowe, in response.
I've been listening to Elysium for a few days now. It's a dreamy meditation on life and death and time. The track Invisible is technically peerless and emotionally wrenching, if you're headed into middle age. The lyrics to "Your Early Stuff" are hilarious, if you've ever had a long career in something. The LA lounge-sound is both new and yet very PSB.
But the song above, "Leaving," has really stayed with me. It couples with "Breathing Space" for me as the highlight of the album. Maybe it's the time of year as the Cape light intensifies and the beaches empty and the dusk turns the tide into purple lava, and shops empty and restaurants close and "leaving" looms. Maybe it's because we're also leaving DC for the coming year to try living in New York City (for Aaron's career and my proximity to the Beast and the Dish team). But the melancholy and hope of autumn find an elegant, calming balance in this latest album. It has made me suddenly very sad at times as I bike through the dunes listening; and also, for longer periods, oddly joyous.
Most of all, the atmosphere of the album felt like home – this little home on my romanticized, elysian sandbar I return to and won't leave summer after summer, reaching forward for something I will never grasp, escaping somewhere for nowhere, wading in the tidal pools and watching the sun change the colors around me and feeling the moon pull the water past me:
There's a place beyond this world
Where the mountains meet the sky
It's a different state of mind
Like a dream where you can flyCan I tell you this in confidence?
I need to regain that old innocence
I stop for some breathing space
Divert from the public place
Return to a private place
I know it's there just in case
I gotta get out
I gotta get out
And now I must leave.
You can buy the album here.
The Dish 