"I Made My Excuses and Left" by the Pet Shop Boys from the album Fundamental. 2006.
I kinda always figured one day the Pet Shop Boys would get a feature. Not because of any favoritism, but rather their... unique blandness. How can they make the bland unique? Well, the way I see it, Mr. Lead Singer fronts the charge from his microphone easy-chair. He doesn't quite sing so much as talk in drawn out tones. And I don't mean that sing-talking/rapping dealio some pop artists like to call upon. No, he just tries to match the subdued, almost lazy feel of the track around him. I can't think of any edge-of-your-seat or edgy songs by the group, and even the hardest-hitting one that comes to mind kind of drones through the vocals. It's like a salt-free saltine cracker. Perhaps you can dip it into a soup or something, but you just have to chew through it.
I do love my saltines though...
Tasteless crackers aside, you're probably wondering why a band like this would interest me if I'm patting them on the back with a dagger. You certainly won't find me listening to a full album in one sitting, no offense to the Boys at the Pet Shop. The songs do blend into one snoring tide. BUT, much like the cracker in the soup, a song or two thrown into a mix can provide just the right mindset to really see their appeal. Hard to illustrate my point without telling you to throw together a playlist with one random track inserted in, but maybe by showing you their take on some famous songs you can snag their approach to music.
"Always on My Mind" (sometimes "You Were Always on My Mind", mind you) has been done by many, many people. I'm just gonna focus on two of the most known versions though: none other than the Elvis Presley and Willie Nelson releases. Soft, sweet, classic renditions carried by vocal presence and everyman songsmithing, respectively. Enter the Pet Store Employees. How much is that doggie in the window! Less of the puppy dog eyes and more of the "waggaly tail" in their rendition. More suited for those 80s' dancehalls too. Not surprisingly then, it hit the number four slot in the US (besides topping many other foreign charts, such as Canada and the UK). They similarly found success with another cover and my second exhibit: the Village People's "Go West". Now I don't want to get into the overt commentaries of communism, nationalism, democracy, imperialism, manifest destiny, or whatever else tailors those robes. Peruse that wardrobe yourself. Alas, by drawing a snivel of inspiration from "There Is Nothing Like a Dame", the Domesticated Animal Shoppe Lads took a disco song to that early 90s sort of dance genre.
Hopefully you can hear through these examples the prowess of the duo. They're imaginative and fun, but maybe in a warm night-in sort of house party. Going back to "Excuses" (and their own writing in general), they seem to venture outside the normal rhyming realms of "goodbye/cry/die" found so regularly in heartbreak songs such as this. Not all the lyrics are gold, like "a silence filled the room, awkward as an elephant" (and the pachyderm's rhyming buddy: 'supplicant'), but a few little key words swing an interesting bat. Slipping 'hadn't' into "I felt I should apologize for what I [hadn't] heard" reveals just the slightest of history between the lovers; instead of a single-frame intrusion on the affair, there now exists an underlying tension that the narrator should have picked up sooner. Simply, the droll sort of singing style fits the scene. The two reactions I can imagine from walking into your cheating partner would either be to get mad or get sad. The sort of drawn-out sorrowful confusion one would drown in after that experience makes par for the Beast Bartering Babies' usual ambiance. That's why I like it so. It almost feels like the guys are singing your story, even if you've never felt the sting of a slighted heart. The emotions, the reactions... they feel... real.
The fan-made music video though, er... not so much. A little.. too empty and drawn-out. Make your excuses and leave that part....
EDIT: turns out this is my 100th post. So... yay Randor? yah. Yay Randor.
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