The pandemic was but a minor blip in Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe’s four decades of arch observation, artful imagery and playful theorising. ‘You’ve got to stay interested,’ they say
In the minutes before we address the business of their 15th album, the Pet Shop Boys outline a small curriculum’s worth of subjects. It’s mid-January and Neil Tennant arrives at London’s Somerset House in a black corduroy blazer and black rollneck, and likens bandmate Chris Lowe’s lateness to something out of Gormenghast. When our synthpop Titus eventually appears in a grey Adidas hoodie, minus the sunglasses that have made him pop’s most mysterious foil, the former architecture student is expounding on illogical new changes to the layout of the Strand.
We locate a conference room and they liaise with their publicist on a “half-time” provision of drinks and cakes. In their east London studio HQ, says Lowe, 64, they like “that big, thick chocolate bar – something-baloney?” Aside from their Tony’s Chocolonely compulsion, they also frequent a nearby deli, where “I also buy 100% rye bread,” says Tennant, 69, segueing into a customarily arch conspiracy. “There is, by the way, out there a much bigger market for 100% rye bread than they supply. Wherever you go, they’ve sold out. Why don’t you make more?”
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