WORTH A LOOK?: ****

Avant Garde was the original title for this song when its music was written on 25 May 2020, according to Pet Shop Boys annual titled, obviously, Annually.

• Read on for reasons including how Pet Shop Boys album Nonetheless is 1 of the best of 2024 so far

In the Diary section documenting new album Nonetheless, our album of the month for April, keyboardist Chris Lowe writes of it: ‘I started Avant Garde at 2346. It sounds quite nightly, doesn’t it? It doesn’t sound like a daytime track.’

Vocalist and lyricist Neil Tennant writes on 27 May after it had been renamed The New Bohemia: ‘Chris sent through a new track he’d written. I loved it, particularly the bit before the chorus – I thought it sounded terribly French.’

On 21 March 2023 the boys are working at James Ford’s house in east London on the new album and Tennant writes: ‘A New Bohemia’ has now become New Bohemia.’

Later, of the song which reverts to A New Bohemia, Tennant writes: ‘I think the idea of A New Bohemia came about from us talking, before lockdown, about how we used to go to the Groucho Club and meet artists and things.

‘And then suddenly we don’t do that anymore. And I miss that.’

The video (watch above) completes a circle as it was directed by Andrew Haigh, who helmed film All Of Us Strangers which included Always On My Mind so memorably, and stars Russell Tovey and Tracey Emin, perhaps in an attempt to recreate a little new bohemia of their own in Margate, Kent where it was shot.

It’s a little early to be discussing albums of the year so far but Nonetheless will doubtless be there or thereabouts for us come 31 December 2024.

What we appreciate in the video is the nod to Pet Shop Boys film It Couldn’t Happen Here particularly the dinner jacket at the beach Tennant is wearing.

The lyrics of the song itself for us combine a nostalgia for the past (Les Petites Bon-Bons were a 70s group of conceptual/life artists) with the sense that, somehow, the future could be even better without the shame of the past.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy Pet Shop Boys Tickets
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