The Pet Shop Boys release albums at a rate almost as impressive as Rihanna, and yet, for some reason, only their niche audience seems to be aware every time their latest profundity comes out. One such record that falls under this category is 2012’s Elysium. (although, of course, it reached number one on the UK charts due to occasional good taste on the part of the British). Released in 2012, three years after the more dance-friendly Yes, Elysium possessed a slower overall tempo, which makes sense when taking into account the meaning of the word: a Greek conception of the afterlife–a vast field that, by Homer’s account, existed on the western edge of Earth near Okeanos, a.k.a. the godlike personification of the sea, as it is an all-encompassing ocean just outside the tenantable universe.
That being said, it’s only to be expected that the theme of death is interwoven throughout, with especial consideration of Pet Shop Boys’ own late in life stage in conjunction with still doing what they do. For, as any music industry executive will still tell you: pop is a young man’s game. Yet Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, along with Madonna, continue to defy that maxim.
The second single after the slightly cheesier first one from Elysium, “Winner,” was “Leaving,” fittingly released in mid-October for an added melancholic feel. A sonically sweeping homage to the perpetual haunting of a love gone cold as a corpse–or worse, murdered by one of the parties involved–“Leaving” is a song of both acceptance and opposition to the daily reminder of the pain lived with as the result of being visited upon by the ghost of memory.
As Neil croons, “Our love is dead/but the dead don’t go away/They made us what we are/they’re with us every day,” the listener is transported to those instances when the carcass of his or her own love persisted in surfacing like a Dahmer victim. This often unwanted fact tends to arise from being triggered by a symbol of the love in question lost (whether this is passing by a place you used to go together or coming across an old artifact like an article of clothing or a letter–email for some) or even a simple unsolicited meandering of the mind toward an incident of the past that occurred between you and your amour mort.
Tennant builds upon the sentiment of a love never really capable of dying in that it always manifests in the form of remembrances by adding, “Our love is dead/but the dead are still alive/in memory and in thought/and the context they provide.” And that context, so very frequently, turns out to be one that reveals to you that you haven’t really moved on, and emotionally it’s impossible for you to do so. Unless, that is, you are a garden variety sociopathic human with no ties or allegiances to anyone but yourself and your advancement. This is sometimes referred to as being a white male, which lends a certain tinge of irony to two Anglicans speaking so eloquently on the subject of unwillingly tending to the cadaver of an affection for someone you can’t be with again. Then again, the duo’s naivete shines through at the conclusion of the song, as they try to imbue you with the glimmer of positivity: “The memory keeps us strong (It keeps us strong)/And if our love is dead (Our love is dead)/It won’t be dead for long (No, not for long).” But that’s only because ceaseless apparitions of the past are half-alive beings.
