Stages of pop

Pet Shop Boys and Alison Krauss

by Douglas Wolk

Pet Shop Boys

Pet Shop Boys' greatest joke is pretending that they have nothing to say. Hiding the substance of their songs beneath a mountain of ridiculous style isn't just their favorite trick, it's the entire point of their work. The stage show for their new Nightlife (London), which was unveiled on November 11 at NYC's Hammerstein Ballroom, is a huge, Cats-style revue that has very little to do with musical performance in the conventional sense. It opens with a scrim on which two giant rotating computer-generated models of singer Neil Tennant's head are projected. Then the curtain falls, explosions go off, "West End Girls" strikes up, and we're in the middle of pure spectacle: Tennant and Chris Lowe in matching fright wigs, sunglasses, and high-fashion raincoats (Tennant, as it turns out, is wearing an even more impressive skirt under his), a giant catwalk-style proscenium on the stage, a wailing diva in a trompe-l'oeil dress, a real-human percussionist tucked away stage left, a screen for more images, and four strapping back-up singer-dancers in matching get-ups -- sailor suits, gaucho outfits, whatever the song requires. No band, as such.

The cheers and applause are not for the performance itself but for what it represents: it's actually Pet Shop Boys, there on stage. (Well, it's Tennant. It's not terribly clear what Lowe does; his role in the show consists of standing behind a keyboard, stage right, more or less immobile.) They are ambassadors for their albums. Tennant may have the thinnest singing voice that's ever scored multiple hits, but it's bodyguarded by superhumanly huge billows of synthesized high camp. Even the Pet Shop Boys' songs aren't the reason the audience loves them: as powerful as their own material is, the biggest cheers were reserved for covers of "Always on My Mind" and "Go West" and "It's Alright" (and for the erupting flashpots and Village People choreography that accompanied them).

The Boys' spectacle parodies spectacle itself. They resurrected the fabulous B-side "Shameless," its chorus stamping around the stage bellowing "We have no integrity/We're ready to crawl." "Ladies and gentleman, Miss Dusty Springfield," was Tennant's introduction for his duet partner on "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" Springfield, who died a few years ago, appeared as a giant projected image and a recorded voice. It was touching, and hilarious, in a way that the same trick isn't when, say, the Notorious B.I.G. appears on a screen at Puff Daddy's performances. That's in part because it was self-conscious about its unreality: if everything is big and fake, if the goal of performers' existence is the Show, then death is not the end, and Springfield's appearance is only a little more artificial than, say, Tennant's.

Alison Krauss's virtues as a performer are as far away from PSBs' virtues as you can get, and her current tour finds her in the uncomfortable position of figuring out how to balance her band's artistry with the spectacle of her public image. Krauss is the best thing that's happened to bluegrass in a generation, and with every album she moves a little closer to mainstream pop. She's touring with her long-time backing band, Union Station, though her recent album, Forget About It (Rounder), is credited simply to Alison Krauss. (Union Station play on most of it, but it's also got instrumentation that wouldn't appear on a hardcore bluegrass album, like electric guitars and drums.)

Union Station's blue-chip stock is virtuosity: they've got miraculous vocal and instrumental rapport, and they scatter their set with lots of instrumentals, shining an actual spotlight on each soloist in turn. Jerry Douglas, who joined the band recently, is a legendary dobro player, and he got a hailstorm of applause every time his name was mentioned November 16 at NYC's Town Hall. Midway through that show, the rest of the band left the stage to Douglas for a couple of solo numbers. They came back to play his full-band electric instrumental, "We Hide and Seek," but it broke down twice, derailed by feedback. The audience took the microphones' wail as a sign and started yelling at the band to play it acoustically; the musicians relented and it came out fine.

Krauss now has two public identities: the ballad diva who covers Todd Rundgren with a touch of Tennessee in her voice and the bluegrass fiddler who sings real pretty too. They go together comfortably on record but not on stage. On this tour, for the first time, a drummer sat in for the beginning and the end of the show -- on songs that made Krauss's angelic voice the star and reduced the rest of the band to anonymity, partly because the group's guitar-bass-banjo-fiddle-dobro dynamics are a lot less interesting with percussion slapping them down every beat. A generation ago, purists would have considered AK/US's attempts at pop crossover heretical and maybe even walked out of the show. It's nice that the audiences of the moment are more open-minded, but Krauss's calculated stylistic shift would seem less facile if there were actually a risk that old fans might be affronted enough to boo.