It’s Alright! The Pet Shop Boys’ greatest-hits tour is a sleek, nostalgic treat

“Sooner or later, this happens to everyone.” Even a band as forward-facing as Pet Shop Boys must, after 14 studio albums, succumb to a greatest-hits tour. Thankfully they’re doing so in typically wry style, with keyboardist Chris Lowe delivering that deadpan opening line – a lyric from their 1986 single Love Comes Quickly – to begin last night’s show of their Dreamworld: The Greatest Hits Live tour at London’s O2 Arena.

The pop duo, Lowe and vocalist Neil Tennant, have staved this fate off for long enough: their two singles collections so far, Discography and PopArt, came out aeons ago in 1998 and 2003 respectively. They’ve always resisted nostalgia, looking ahead to their next release while leaving a trail of hits in their wake. This evening’s setlist skewed towards singles that fell between their 1986 debut album, Please, and 1993’s best-seller, Very (which remains, surprisingly, their sole UK Number One). Given the long stretch since the last airing of some of these tracks – it’s been 30 years, for instance, since they performed their version of Stephen Sondheim’s Losing My Mind – the night felt like both a predictable hit parade and something entirely fresh.

During an impeccably sequenced set, Pet Shop Boys gave many a subtle nod to the past. On a minimally decked-out stage, two lamp-posts evoked the London streets of their first music-videos, during an intimate opening segment of songs that saw Tennant and Lowe performing alone. These songs, which included classic tracks such as Suburbia and Rent, were punchy and dignified; they made for a stark recreation of what Tennant refers to as the duo’s “imperial phase”.

And yet the show was no mere hit-parade: it contained enough fresh sustenance for the die-hard fans as well. Tennant delivered indulgent biographical preambles, revealing the genesis of songs such as Domino Dancing, while Lowe recited lines from their (unforgivably absent) cult favourite Paninaro and their brilliant recent B-side Decide. Archival footage flickered across giant screens behind them: an art show retrospective blown up to pop-star proportions. Industrial-style lighting complemented this mood; if anything, after the flamboyance of previous tours, the elegant visuals seemed almost too tasteful. Bring back the pointy hats!

Instead, the dress code was strictly monochrome. Tennant strode about the stage in a series of sleek coats, before emerging for an encore performance of West End Girls in the same long black coat and tie he wore for the song’s 1985 music video, while Lowe sported his familiar BOY cap from the same era. Almost 40 years have passed since that breakthrough hit, though the duo wouldn’t play live until 1989 with their highly theatrical, Derek Jarman-produced “Performance” tour. “We didn’t want there to be lulls in our gigs,” Tennant recalled in an interview last month, about those nerve-wracking early shows. “We wanted things to keep happening.”

Things certainly kept happening on Sunday night. The relentless volley of hits might have implied that the pair were on autopilot, but they were never boring. At one point, Tennant strummed an acoustic guitar like a busker beneath one of the lamp-posts – a discombobulating vision. His voice, however, remained as strong as it’s ever been, holding up against fellow vocalist Clare Uchuma on What Have I Done To Deserve This? The spindly disco of 2020 single Monkey Business slotted neatly among older numbers such as Se a vida é (That’s the Way Life Is), while It’s Alright lingered movingly on its closing line: “It’s going to be alright / The music plays forever…”

Pet Shop Boys exuded a dignified chic over all this, but their efforts to swerve sentimentality were rightfully undercut by the music. Tennant and Lowe stood side by side for their final song, Being Boring; it was written in the early 1990s, in part about a friend who died from AIDS, and about how you can’t look forward without considering the past. It has only gained resonance as the years pass, becoming an almost unbearably moving example of what this duo still do better than anyone: fit a lifetime of cultural reference, emotion and loss into a perfect pop song.

Touring until June, then abroad until October. Tickets: petshopboys.co.uk/tour