THE MOVIE:

I absolutely adore the Pet Shop Boys and have long felt that pop culture has not given this band their due. The public consciousness has somehow frozen somewhere around the late 1980s as far as the band is concerned, missing the fact that the duo of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have continued creating music on into the new millennium, blazing a trail as innovators in electronic dance music. They've even expanded their range to do stage plays and a modern score for Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, a version of which I'd love to see on DVD. And yet, when I told a friend that I had gotten their new concert disc, Pet Shop Boys: Cubism in Concert, he asked, "Really? Are they still around?"

Le sigh.

Yes, still around and very much at the height of their powers. Last year's Fundamental record was their best since 1994's Very, which I'd consider the creative zenith for Pet Shop Boys. Cubism in Concert was shot last November in Mexico City as part of the tour to promote Fundamental, and though there is a good amount of attention paid to that album, the band has over twenty years of material to draw from for their set. Really, the "Cubism" title seems an appropriate description of this kind of musical construct: a band's career represented in one sitting, all the facets of two decades of music represented in under two hours, viewing all angles at once and making each song equal on the timeline. I may just be pulling that out of my butt, but the Pet Shop is the workplace of rather smart Boys, and I wouldn't put it past them.

The Cubism idea also extends to the stage set, where the backdrop is a stack of several squares, all of which can work as individual boxes or as one solid box (and which get moved by men on the stage). Images can be projected on them, but Tennant and his dancers can also go behind them and become figures in this artistic tenement, performing from within the structure. As the concert opens, the dancers and back-up singers stroll out on stage dressed as Tennant and Lowe, making the duo's emergence in the same outfits part of one blur of detail, as if Picasso were painting them in motion. There may be only two, but with their doppelgangers, we can see them from every side at once.

The rest of the stage show is equally impressive, though midway the dancers will change costumes to fit different themes that emerge in the set. There is no band per se, just Tennant on the microphone and Lowe on keyboards, playing the bigger hooks live but also working with preprogrammed musical tracks. It's as much Broadway spectacle as it is rock concert, and so the band has arranged the songs as much by theme and style as by sound. The spelling chorus of "Minimal" provides a natural segue into the spelling chorus of "Shopping," and the consumerism of "Shopping" can only be followed by the love-in-the-bank ballad "Rent." Likewise, though love is killed in "Dreaming of the Queen," it is instantly revived by "Heart," and the calculation and criminal scheming of "Opportunities" gives way to the corporate chastisement of "Integral." There are also more music-based groupings, like the Latin sounds linking "Se a Vide E" and "Domino Dancing" or putting their Elvis and U2 covers back-to-back.

It's an intelligent, thoughtful approach to putting a setlist together, and it's great that it gives Pet Shop Boys the freedom to give us as many strong album cuts as they give us singles. Tennant is an excellent showman, carrying the concert squarely on his shoulders. His voice sounds just as good as it did back in the day, but maybe more mature now, more assured and slightly deeper. He still goes with the nearly flat, unemotional delivery that somehow manages to wring power and emotion out of his literary pop lyrics anyway. It's been the most obvious calling card of the Pet Shop Boys sound, and they are so good at capturing the iciness of heartbreak, I can't think of any band that has yet tried to borrow the technique. It would be like trying to reinvigorate Cubist painting: will you ever be able to do it better than Picasso? Probably not.

The full song list:
Psycho Intro
God Willing
Psychological
Left to My Own Devices
I'm With Stupid
Suburbia
Can You Forgive Her?
Minimal
Shopping
Rent
Dreaming of the Queen
Heart
Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)
Integral
Numb
Se A Vide E (That's The Way Life Is)
Domino Dancing
Flamboyant
Home and Dry
Always on My Mind
Where the Streets Have No Name
West End Girls
The Sodom and Gomorrah Show
So Hard
It's a Sin
Go West

The gears shift into high camp in the final clutch of songs, with spangly military uniforms donned for "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show" and then glittery top hats, with the dancers going back to their costumes that match the main duo. "So Hard" is a slowed down remix version, sung entirely by the back-up singers (including regular PSB gal Sylvia Mason-James), and "It's a Sin" and "Go West" are big performances, with all the stops pulled out for a massive finish.

THE DVD

Video:
Rhino has put Pet Shop Boys: Cubism in Concert on DVD in high style. The widescreen image is bright and clear, capturing every detail of the stage show without going flat and sterile. Filmed in High Definition and edited to give us many vantage points, seeing the lights and the dancers and the band itself, the show keeps moving, emanating the energy of live performance and looking marvelous while doing so.

Sound:
Three mixes: PCM Stereo, Dolby 5.1, and DTS. The sound is perfect, with a real fullness that brings the thunder of the concert experience.

Extras:
I am reviewing Pet Shop Boys: Cubism in Concert based on a pre-release disc that came without the packaging. My research tells me, though, that the final product will come with a 12-page booklet put together by the band as well as an outer slipcover. Half of the copies of the DVD will feature Neil Tennant on the slipcover, and the other half will have an image of Chris Lowe. Pick you favorite Boy!

There are also extras on the DVD itself, and those I did receive. In addition to a photo gallery from the production, there is also a nine-minute, twenty-second documentary looking at the band's trip south of the border, featuring interviews with fans and some explanation of how the concert was put together. Additionally, there is a feature-length audio commentary with Tennant, Lowe, and director David Barnard, who previously shot concerts by Bjork and Gorillaz. It's a fun commentary, mainly dominated by Tennant and Lowe, who have fun making light of what unlikely pop stars they are. It's a little spotty, because it's a musical performance, not a story, so there are times when I imagine there just isn't anything to say. Barnard usually chimes in with technical info.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
The best concert DVDs make you feel like you are there, inspiring the viewer to sing along and maybe even dance a little in his or her home. Pet Shop Boys: Cubism in Concert is a buoyant document of the Pet Shop Boys' most recent tour. An excellent stage set and well-chosen songs are the backbone of it, but the film is put together well and the DVD technology taken full advantage of. Highly, Highly Recommended.

Jamie S. Rich is a novelist and comic book writer. He is best known for his collaborations with Joelle Jones, including the hardboiled crime comic book You Have Killed Me, the challenging romance 12 Reasons Why I Love Her, and the 2007 prose novel Have You Seen the Horizon Lately?, for which Jones did the cover. All three were published by Oni Press. His most recent projects include the futuristic romance A Boy and a Girl with Natalie Nourigat; Archer Coe and the Thousand Natural Shocks, a loopy crime tale drawn by Dan Christensen; and the horror miniseries Madame Frankenstein, a collaboration with Megan Levens. Follow Rich's blog at Confessions123.com.