Christmas cracker

I'm a little late to the party on this one today due to the fact that I was in the process of molding young minds at a university. More on that later.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Pet Shop Boys will release a five track, Christmas EP to coincide with their forthcoming UK shows. "Christmas" (Inspired title, no?) will be released on December 14. The tracklisting is as follows:

1. It Often Doesn't Snow At Christmas (New Version)
2. My Girl
3. All Over The World (New Version)
4. Viva La Vida/Domino Dancing
5. My Girl (Our House Mix)

The new version of "All Over The World" has been produced by PSB with Marius de Vries, who has most notably twiddled the knobs for Björk, Annie Lennox and Rufus Wainwright, among others. I first came across Marius in the 80s as the keyboard player for The Blow Monkeys. Since then, he has developed into a magnificent producer of lush proportions.

Also co-produced by Marius is a new version of “It Doesn’t Often Snow At Christmas”, originally an exclusive Christmas single issued to members of the Pet Shop Boys fan club in 1997.

Pet Shop Boys’ arrangement of the Madness classic, “My Girl”, was originally performed with Suggs and Carl of Madness at “Can You Bear It?”, last year’s charity benefit for the family of Chris and Neil’s former assistant and close friend, Dainton Connell, who was tragically killed in a car accident. A remix of "My Girl" will round out the rest of this special package.

The EP also includes a medley of Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” and Pet Shop Boys' very own “Domino Dancing” which has been a highlight on the current PSB world tour. However, rather than include a live version of it from the tour, they recruited Stuart Price to produce a studio version of the track especially for this release. Stuart famously produced their 2009 Brits Medley and, of course, Madonna's "Confessions On A Dancefloor". Nice work if you can get it!

Many will notice that neither my mixes of "Beautiful People" nor Ralphi Rosario's mixes of "Did You See Me Coming?" have been included. But that doesn't mean they won't be able available. I hate to sound like a broken record. Or would that be a corrupted file these days? Well, they do still press vinyl. Whatever your phrase of choice, just keep watching this space. Seriously. After all, Christmas is nearly upon us.

And why the multi-colored balloons on the sleeve? Have I missed something? What do they have to do with Christmas? Shouldn't they have been ornaments or something similarly festive?

I'm getting a little misty about this EP. Remember when PSB used to pull out a surprise, single out of their back pockets in the middle of an album campaign?

The release of "Christmas" isn't quite the same as when they issued non-album singles, "Always On My Mind" and "Where The Streets Have No Name (I Can't Take My Eyes Off You)", especially since they were in the midst of their imperial phase at the time. But the inclusion of "My Girl" (a cover!) and "Viva La Vida/Domino Dancing" (a mash up of covers!) is certainly in the spirit of those previous, classic singles. I can hear 100,000 PSB fans rejoice!