Pet Shop Boys - Format [Cut-down Playlist]

In short, the Pet Shop Boys are one of the best b-sides acts in pop. And with the release of their second b-sides compilations (that's right, they have so many of them they need two to just fit them all in - and this is a double-disc set at that too). Following on from Alternative, new disc Format is a dazzling bringing-together of the Boys' characteristic synth-pop wizardry and in term of quality, it puts most artists' Greatest Hits collections to shame - that's how good PSB are at b-sides.

They've also put together this great mini-site for the album release, which goes some way to deciphering the excellent colour-coded cover art. It's fully interactive n' everything!

Here's a smattering of some of the best tracks on there if you fancy a shortened playlist of sorts:

The Truck Driver And His Mate
After The Event
Always
Sexy Northerner
The Resurrectionist
Blue On Blue
No Time For Tears
Bright Young Things
Party Song
How I Learned To Hate Rock 'n' Roll
Confidential
Friendly Fire

Hunting for the edit...

In these days of party playlists and iPod mix-tapes, sometimes all we want is a radio edit. As artists seem to every-frequently pack their albums with four-minute-plus long tracks and lengthy instrumental segways between songs, we're often left with little bits and pieces that while perfectly fine in the context of the album, just don't fit when we're listening to the track individually.

Now, normally this wouldn't be a problem, but in an age of declining 'proper' single releases - where there will be no official CD release, or in some cases no digital release either. Instead an album campaign will just see a stream of 'promo singles' and the artist will just leave the public to download the lengthy album versions, forcing fans who want the edited versions to track down expensive radio promo's on Ebay or wait til the edit surfaces on some random compilation CD months later.

When we hear a song on the radio, that is the version of the song we want; yet still these versions never seem to surface with anything approaching regularity on the regular download services.

Maybe it's just the completist in me but sometimes all I want is a nice three-and-a-half minute long version of a song, all the awesomeness packed into a bite-size chunk I can comfortably fit into my daily commute.