PET SOUNDS.

Pet Shop Boys bring their Bric-A-Brac to the South Coast.

Concert: 20st July 2010 - Bournemeouth International Centre // Published: 21st July 2010

It begrudges us to say that Sophie Ellis-Bexter's umpteenth’s swipe at the musical career ladder seems like another successful move. Our negative slant at tonight's support act is only apparent because we had a killer of an opening paragraph which went along the lines of, 'Bexter may continue to remind us there's murder on the dance floor yet her comeback single comes with a suicidal noose around its neck'. As it stands, 'Not Giving Up' is anything but a cold turkey of a release and sets the standard for Neil & Chris's Pandemonium tour.

The boys have always been artistic and creative fellas. Tonight’s stage set revolves around white cubes which will build, destruct and reshuffle their backdrop over the course of the next two hours. For now the cubes will form two larger rectangular shapes which will conceal the electronic dance music duo appearance before the opening pulses of 'Heart' will see Neil and Chris appear on stage wearing square boxes over their heads, carrying on this innovation fixation with the six-sided structure.

The set alone makes one understand why the boys are still important today when they were back in their tender entertaining years of 1981. Despite childish homophobic remarks when the bands name is mentioned in lad cultured playgrounds the band have never diverted from their energetic and catchy releases, earning them a well deserved Brit Award in 2009 for Outstanding Contribution To Music.

Unmasked and tailoring head-gear the duo take their positions, Tennant in front of the leading microphone sporting a bowler hat and Lowe behind his DJ booth topped with flat cap for the third track of the evening, Did You See Me Coming? before playing Pandemonium echoing the tours title.

Behind them two animated pixels resembling the additional keyboard players (dressed in cube-shaped outfits) start building a wall on the two screens projected the towers which are still in tact from the opening number. When the final brick is in place the towers are demolished and the foundation opening tracks to Go West erupted the local village people congregated tonight in Bournemouth's International Centre.

Why Don't We Live Together? saw Chris temporary flying the nest and dance with humans dressed as buildings before retreating home to roost behind his keyboards. The dancers in questions played a recurring role throughout the evening, one of the most poignant moments saw two of the quartet 'left to their own devices' acting out a domestic break-up to the sounds of 'Jealousy' accumulating with white cubes being thrown between the unstable couple.

With the pieces back together the sounds of ‘Suburbia’ and ‘What Have I Done To Deserve This?’ continued with a rather strange, yet satisfying concoction mixture of Coldplay's Viva La Vida with a slice of Domino Dancing which saw Neil parading around the stage wearing a crown and a robe attempting to take the heir from Chris Martin albeit for just a few minutes.

Ebbing back to their own royal roots the boys continued with It's A Sin before ending their theatrical display by leaving the crowd singing their praises to the sounds to 'West End Girls'.