Pet Shop Boys

Pet Shop Boys resume their exceptional late-period run with Hotspot, their third in a series of high quality collaborations with producer/engineer Stuart Price. Recorded at Berlin's legendary Hansa Studios, the acclaimed duo's 14th album finds them firmly in their element, delivering crisp electro-pop invocations, wry dance bangers, and melodic gems both sunny and stormy. Still more or less in the self-described "electronic purist" mode of 2013's Electric and 2016's Super, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe make a few allowances here, particularly on the melancholic standout, "Beneath the Heather," which features some crafty psych-inspired guitar work from Suede guitarist Bernard Butler.

The fan-geared Format follows in the footsteps of 1995's Alternative which collected the synth pop group's B-sides from the years 1985-1994. Here, it's 1996-2009, which means from Bilingual to Yes with a couple of musicals, ballets, and silent film soundtracks in between. Remixes are, for the most part, left for another set and while many fans keep up with PSB singles for the B-sides, this set, like Alternative, is appreciated by the faithful for its ease of use alone. Highlights include grand moments like "The Truck Driver and His Mate" and "How I Learned to Hate Rock 'N' Roll," along with some more whim-like numbers like "We're the Pet Shop Boys." If B-side collections spawned singles, the redo of "In Private" with Elton John as guest would be huge, and it's interesting how the demo of "Confidential" for Tina Turner recasts the song as one wistfully pining for a closeted lover…

Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant have written four pieces of incidental music and a couple of songs for a stage version of the classic British film, "My Beautiful Laundrette", written by Hanif Kureishi.

Post-modern ironists cloaked behind a veil of buoyantly melodic and lushly romantic synth pop confections, Pet Shop Boys offer wry yet strangely affecting cultural commentary communicated by the Morse code of synth washes and drum machine rhythms. After first emerging in the mid-'80s with "West End Girls" and "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)," Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe quickly established themselves as hitmaking singles artists who were also able to craft emotionally resonant albums, like 1988's Introspective and 1990's Behaviour. The duo navigated the constantly shifting landscape of modern dance-pop with grace and intelligence, moving easily from disco to house music to thoughtful synth pop without losing their distinctive style in the process…