ballet for boys

There are two schools of thought about Pet Shop Boys' current hits collection. The first one marks it as an appropriate distillation of their hits in celebration of the 25th anniversary of "West End Girls" rising to #1 in the UK singles ranking.

Fair enough. It gave them the opportunity to tantalize their fans with a new song and a DVD of classic BBC television performances. The new single, "Together", won't be released in its physical format until November 29. Sadly, this might be the first single from Les Boys to miss the top 40.

With "Ultimate" barely scraping into the top 30 of the UK albums chart, along with it being scheduled for release in the US in February, it really underscores the rather useless exercise it has become for many fans.

However, I have a theory. After the release of their last brilliant longplayer, "Yes", followed by a live touring spectacle, PSB needed something to bridge the gap between the end of the "Pandemonium" tour and their next most incredible thing. Did you see what I did there?

And so, this March will see the release of "The Most Incredible Thing", the highly anticipated collaboration between PSB and choreographer, Javier De Frutos.

This promises to be another in a long line of interesting career twists for Neil and Chris. It will stand proudly alongside similar PSB projects like "Closer To Heaven", "Battleship Potempkin" and "Concrete", all of which took great pleasure in pushing the boundaries of the pop idiom.