Pet Shop Boys - Axis & Electric Announced!

So, for music news today there's only really one thing you can expect me to post about, isn't there? Its been on the official Pet Shop Boys site for the last 13 hours or so but that was around 1am local time for me so I just decided to go to bed. That aside, we now finally know the release date, artwork and the first single for Electric! They've also announced the full set of tour dates for USA so I hope all US fans are able to make it to at least one show. Now, back to Electric! It's going to be released on July 15th - although international dates will vary - on Pet Shop Boys own new label: x2 (which is pronounced "times two"). The album contains nine tracks with one of these being a cover of Bruce Springsteen's track The Last To Die. Also the rumors that there was a song entitled Love Is A Bourgeois Construct are true as that appears on the album. If nine tracks sounds rather short, the album does clock in at around the fifty minute mark so from the sounds of it the tracks will average around five minutes in length: very much like Relentless did. The overall sound for Electric then? It's going to be a complete reaction against Elysium: its "pretty banging" to directly quote Pet Shop Boys. That's not a huge surprise as the album is produced by Stuart Price. He's worked with Pet Shop Boys before on the Pandemonium tour and he's also produced Madonna's acclaimed Confessions On A Dancefloor. He's one of my favourite producers and I was hoping he'd produce a Pet Shop Boys album at some point actually. All very exciting news indeed! There's also a collaboration on the album too, the track Thursday will feature British electro rapper Example. Truth be told I'm not a big fan of Example and I wouldn't have expected Pet Shop Boys to work with him but never the less I'm intrigued as to what they've come up with. As for the new single, its called Axis and it sounds great. I will go into Axis in more detail in a follow up post to this one but let's just say its classic Pet Shop Boys and so far reactions to it seem very positive. Far more positive than when Winner was released. I personally really liked Elysium but I feel Electric is shaping up to blow it out of the water, and it feels like there's more hype and excitement surrounding it. I thought Elysium had a quiet sort of campaign but this feels like its all guns blazing which is great. Roll on July 15th!

To purchase Axis via Itunes or to preorder the vinyl/CD of Electric click here