Pet Shop Boys – Bilingual

PSB had raised their level with Behaviour to a higher scale than they had ever achieved. With this album begins the decline to which they would only go through isolated songs in some of the following albums, but never again a "Behaviour" or one "Very"... a shame, this album only saves the sublime and melancholy ballad It Always Comes A Surprise.

'Bilingual', 1996, marked the point where the Pet Shop Boys' magic dried up.
'A Red Letter Day' is clearly the only good song on the album, and it might scrape into their Top 50 songs, maybe. 'Before' and 'Se A Vida E' were surprisingly also deemed worthy of single release, but have no hook or nice melody. 'Single' was released too, but with some kind of marching band drums being more of a gimmick than a hook.
'It Always Comes As A Surprise' had potential as a soft ballad, but has a weak chorus, verses, bridge, and lyrics - which doesn't really leave much else. It also features a saxophone.
'Metamorphosis' might not be the worst song they've ever made (See: 'The Former Enfant Terrible', actually, don't!), but it's up there, and certainly the most 'cringe'.
The other tracks are just *nothing*.
The previous album, 1993's 'Very', ostensibly showed signs of less seriousness, but beneath that the melodies and hooks were still good - especially with 'Go West' (albeit a cover).
If Bilingual is known as the 'coming out' album, it seems like it was only coming out because it was obviously dying of AIDS.
2/5.

Just delete "Metamorphosis", "Electricity", "Before" and "Saturday Night Forever" and this is among their best ever releases.

Lots of possible threads but none leading anywhere, really. The most interesting and best tracks are the SheBoom collaborations (Discoteca, Single, Se a vida é) – a shame that instead of more of those sounds we get thin dance pop (Metamorphosis) and a b-side (Electricity). A sweet, if slightly underproduced and overlong ballad (It Always Comes As A Surprise) is the centrepiece of the record. The following eurodisco of A Red Letter Day is the first appearance of a generic psb-template that would be repeated with almost every album afterwards (NYC Boy, Sodom, Did You See Coming?, Love Is A Bourgeois Construct). Apart from a production that hasn't aged well (and sounded slightly forced even at the time of release) it is actually quite a beautiful song – just listen to the live recording on the I Get Along single. The rest of the album consists of demo-quality and completely out of place Danny Tenaglia-produced tracks. While I've always been partial to Up Against It and To Step Aside, they could have used more than a little additional polish. All in all a mishmash, unsure of itself and lacking direction. 3/5