The morning email brought a message from NPR informing me that their listeners completely skipped the eighties in a best year in music poll. The graphic accompanying the story included photos of Twisted Sister and Don Johnson and once again I was reminded that I obviously danced through that decade far removed from the "real" world. Shunning the urge to post pithy comments on the site, I took the high road and gave in to Pet Shop Boys' "Love Comes Quickly" for the eleventyhundredth time since it's release in 1986, reveling in the couplet "I know it sounds ridiculous, but speaking from experience" as always.
The reasons that I love this song are many because this record works hard to keep the listener off balance; seducing us with syncopated heartbeats, heavy breaths, and sighs of "yes" It's all there, the sounds to accompany the feeling that you're giving in to temptation. And I fall for it every time with only a melody that proves that synth pop is not just beats and blips to cushion the blow.
"Sooner or later, this happens to everyone..."
One of the other tricks of this track is revealed in the liner notes of the excellent 2001 re-issue of "Please" where Chris Lowe mentions that the sequencer shifted the bassline by a sixteenth, playing off the beat. Maybe it's this that amplifies the constant feeling of falling and being caught but it just may be my romantic nature.
Pet Shop Boys were a perfect pop package. Neil Tennant was the wordy world weary aunt and Chris Lowe the randy rough trade "nephew" and at face or foot value, they offered up crafty confections that could easily be discarded should one not wish to think too much. For those who don't mind the strain, there is also a fine documentation of one or two of the many worlds that thrived just below the surface of a decade that was only superficial to those that were or who just weren't there.
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