I just finished listening to the Pet Shop Boys “The Parlophone Years” documentary/mixtape presentation at the BBC. It’s quite good and the interview bits run the expected gamut from informative to amusing to introspective, and you get bits and pieces of songs from nearly the entirety of their career. (They left EMI/Parlophone shortly before releasing their 2013 album, Electric.)

There are three main musical acts at the core of my library. Genesis (and most of its solo offshoots), Midnight Oil, and the Pet Shop Boys. Of those, only one remains active. What this documentary program reminded me of is that for basically my entire music-purchasing life I’ve been fortunate enough to get a new PSB record every so often, and nearly every time I’ve found something to enjoy about the new record. That’s a thirty-year-plus run of superb songcraft.

“Opportunities.” “Suburbia.” “It’s a sin.” “Left to my own devices.” “Always on my mind.” “Domino dancing.” “How can you expect to be taken seriously?” “So hard.” “Being boring.” “I wouldn’t normally do this kind of thing.” “Single.” “Yesterday, when I was mad.” “Closer to heaven.” “Integral.” “The Sodom and Gomorrah Show.” “Pandemonium.” “Did you see me coming?” “Love etc.” “Leaving.” “The pop kids.”

And that’s just selections you can hear bits of in the program linked above, to say nothing of, let’s say, “The end of the world” or “The Theatre” or “Metamorphosis” or “Up against it” or “To step aside” (look, Bilingual is an amazing album, okay?) or “Minimal” or “Twentieth Century” and so forth.

I feel like I’ve reconnected just a bit with one of the key threads woven into the fabric of my conscious life. Not a bad way to spend part of a day off, yeah? Yeah.