Saturday Deluxe / 30 Jan 2016

Pet Shop Boys are back and in a couple of months will release a new album SUPER. It’s too early to start writing it off, but the song they’e made available, Inner Sanctum, has all the drama of It’s a Sin, without, er, the song. It sounds like they’ve skipped the ‘album version’ and cut straight to the club remix. Or make that dub remix  since this song has 17 words which are repeated three times “In the inner sanctum you’re a star, the girls, the guys, they all know who you are”. And that’s it.

I hope this ‘song’ is atypical when it comes to the album, because I’m not impressed. It’s hardly Only The Wind or October Symphony. Neil Tennant is a great lyricist, so this seems rather lazy. They’ve perhaps given up on the ‘pop’ charts and turned the ‘club’ dial up to 11. Anyway, I’ll save my excitement and anticipation for the reissue of Please, an album that really has stood the test of time.

Read about Pet Shop Boys and SUPER here

Phil Collins was on BBC Breakfast in the UK this week, to promote his reissues. I always find this kind of inane promotion problematic. It was a really boring interview, Phil was ill at ease and there was literally no conversation AT ALL about the reissues. The Breakfast team were obviously pleased to have such a big star on ‘the sofa’ but there was a bit of chat about his health issues, a does-it-bother-you-that-you’re-not-cool enquiry, and a few clips of some of his his many hits. Fair enough, the ‘general public’ got some kind of message that he was promoting something, but how many of those folks still buy physical music and how many would buy a Phil Collins reissue remains to be seen. I asked Warners if I could talk to Mr Collins about the reissues but was told this was not possible. Apart from when SDE talks to artists, they hardly ever get asked about the specifics of reissues or campaigns. The just chat about the album in general. You’ve already sold the album millions of times over, 30 years on let’s talk about the reissue!!

Read about Phil Collins’ reissues here

ChartWatch

David Bowie continues to dominate the UK charts, with – wait for it –HALF of the top ten taken up by his albums in the physical sales chart; two hits compilations (Best of Bowie and Nothing Has Changed at numbers two and four respectively) and three studio albums. Blackstar is still number one (yay) while Hunky Dory and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars are seven and eight respectively. Adele and Justin Bieber have no place mixing it with Bowie but the public gets what the public wants, so both of those are in the top five. In total 15 David Bowie albums are in the UK top 40 physical sales chart.

In other news, Suede’s Night Thoughts is in at number six, which isn’t bad and Steven Wilson‘s 4 1/2 is another new entry at number 14. My deluxe Night Thoughts turned up from Amazon Italy on Tuesday, but so far remains unplayed. I’ve avoided all the social media promotion so haven’t heard a single snippet from the album yet. Will have to make an effort to listen to it soon, since I’m going to see them on 12 February when they play their NME show at London’s Forum venue.