Pet Shop Boys - The Most Incredible Thing

The Pet Shop Boys doing a ballet soundtrack? For any other pop act, this might appear an incredibly daunting task; but for the duo who against all odds have remained relevant across 25 years of history, this represents a fascinating exercise in song-writing brilliance. Of course the most obvious comparisons will be to the Pet Shop Boys previous soundtrack which they produced for the film Battleship Potemkin. While The Most Incredible Thing might not be as powerful and forceful as that work, it revels in its far more pretty subtleties. And while slightly more outré moments like some of The Clock segments can throw the listener off a little, on the whole I reckon this is a far stronger and more consistent work. The real magic here is that the music really does tell the story. There’s a wonderful little storybook that comes with the CD that tells the narrative of the ballet, and tying that narrative to the music, it all fits so well. And as with all great soundtracks, there’s marvellous little motifs that re-occur throughout the duration, little hooks that snag your mind and draw you in to the whole bewitching magic of it all. For the hour or so of its duration, you belong to this album and its music – completely and utterly.

Tracks like The Challenge have a dramatic, epic beauty to them and the synth/orchestra blend that falls across the whole album is simply breathtaking. Moments remind me of the brilliant soundtracks to the Final Fantasy video-game series and that same sweeping grandeur and sense of wonder. Meanwhile, the guitar-edged Risk has moment of the Chung King Express soundtrack to it. The Competition will please PSB traditionalists, it’s all acid house bleepy synths and crowd noise – in an instant we’re taken back to the early 90s – I’m pretty sure it samples the Perfect Immaculate Mix of Integral too. As the track develops and the orchestral elements come to fore there’s strong vibes of the DJ Culture b-side Overture to Performance. And it’s here that you see the sheer wonder of this album emerge, this is the album the PSB’s have had in them their entire career long – we’ve seen glimpses of it peeping out in every album of theirs, but now, we have the complete end-product in marvellous soundtrack form.

Oh, and one last thing, I really, really want a full version of ‘What Do You Want From Me Baby’ that crops up halfway through The Grind.