Spin And Groove

There are records I play when I want energy. And then there’s Behaviour — the record I play when I want the opposite of energy. Not silence, exactly. Something more specific: that feeling of being very still in a room full of sound. Pet Shop Boys’ fourth album, released in October 1990, is the quietest and most interior thing they’ve ever made. And I think it’s their best.

I’ve owned this on vinyl for several years. I had the CD before that, and before that I had one of those tinny cassette copies that circulated in Hong Kong in the early 1990s. None of those versions told me what this record actually was. Vinyl did. The analogue warmth of this production — and it is specifically analogue, Tennant and Lowe made that choice deliberately — comes through differently on vinyl than on any digital format I’ve tried.

Choosing Analog in 1990

By 1990, digital synthesizers had largely taken over popular music production. MIDI sequencing, DX7-style FM synthesis, the whole toolkit of late-1980s pop — Tennant and Lowe had used it, and apparently decided they were done with it. For Behaviour, they worked with producer Harold Faltermeyer (best known for the Beverley Hills Cop soundtrack, specifically “Axel F”) on a deliberately analogue approach. Vintage synthesizers. Warmer tones. Fewer sharp digital edges.

The difference is audible from the first track. Behaviour has a softness to its textures — not soft as in weak, but soft as in rounded, as in the sounds have corners rather than edges. It’s a production choice that perfectly matches the emotional register of the writing. Everything here is reflective. Nothing is confrontational.

Being Boring

I need to spend some time on this song because it’s one of the great pop songs.

“Being Boring” begins with ninety seconds of instrumental — gentle synth chords building very slowly — before Tennant’s voice enters. The song is autobiographical, drawing on a friend who died of AIDS. Neil Tennant has talked in interviews about the period of his life the song covers: his twenties in London, the parties, the sense of possibility, the friends who didn’t make it through the epidemic. The lyric pulls between those memories and the present — a meditation on what it means to get older when some of the people you expected to age alongside you are gone.

What makes it extraordinary is how controlled it is. Tennant doesn’t oversell any of it. The delivery is almost matter-of-fact. The production is similarly restrained. And the result is devastatingly effective — far more so than a more emotional approach would have been. Sometimes understatement is everything.

The Rest of Side 1

“This Must Be the Place I Waited Years to Leave” has one of those titles that tells you the whole song in one sentence. It’s about a specific claustrophobia — a relationship or a situation that hasn’t worked out but that you’re still inside, watching yourself watch it fail. The melody is lovely and slightly sad in the way Pet Shop Boys melodies often are.

“To Face the Truth” and “How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously?” offer something slightly more direct — the latter has an almost ironic uptempo feel that gives Side 1 a bit of breathing room before “Only the Wind” closes it on a quiet, atmospheric note.

Side 2

“My October Symphony” opens Side 2 with grand, orchestral gestures — big string sounds, a sense of occasion. It’s the most overtly ambitious track on the record and earns it. Then “So Hard,” which has a slightly more driving rhythm than the rest of the album and gave them a solid single. It sounds great on vinyl — the low end is more present than on the CD version, and the hook is one of their most immediate.

“Nervously” is an oddity — tense and slightly unsettled, never quite landing anywhere comfortable, which is presumably the point. Then “The End of the World,” which manages to be both cinematic and intimate at the same time.

“Jealousy” closes the album, and it’s a perfect closer. A slow, sustained piece of synth orchestration with a vocal performance from Tennant that sits right at the edge of emotion without crossing over. It doesn’t resolve neatly. Neither does the album. They both just end, leaving you slightly suspended.

Tracklist

Where This Sits in Their Catalogue

Pet Shop Boys have made a lot of records, and the debates about their best are worth having. Please is where they found their voice. Actually is where they proved it. Introspective is the club record. Behaviour is where they went inward.

Entertainment Weekly called it their best album at the time of release, which struck me as brave — it’s not the easy commercial choice. Q magazine included it in their best albums of 1990 list. Retrospectively, it’s consistently cited as one of their defining works, and I think the retrospective view is right. Albums like this one take time to reveal themselves. Immediate impact isn’t what they’re going for.

On vinyl, the listening experience matches the music perfectly. There’s a physicality to dropping a needle on this record — the slight ritual of it, the commitment to a side — that suits an album that rewards the same kind of committed, unhurried attention.

Equipment Used for This Recording

I was using the Ortofon DJ Cartridge on the Technics SL-1200 MK3 for this recording, with the Yamaha HA-5 as the phono preamp. The Ortofon DJ Cartridge’s elliptical stylus traces the groove accurately across the full frequency spectrum, which matters for a record like this where the interest is in texture and nuance as much as in dynamics.

The Technics SL-1200 handles the relatively quiet passages on this album well — no rumble, no motor noise intruding into the quieter moments. For reflective music like Behaviour, surface noise and mechanical intrusion are the enemy of the listening experience, and a well-maintained SL-1200 keeps both to a minimum.

For more on the Ortofon DJ cartridge range: Ortofon DJ FAQ.

Further Listening

If Behaviour is your entry point to Pet Shop Boys, Actually is the natural companion — more direct, equally intelligent. For the other end of their range, Introspective is the dance record. All three represent something genuinely different from each other, which is not something you can say about many pop artists’ catalogues.

The Wikipedia entry for Behaviour has useful background on the production process and the album’s reception: Behaviour on Wikipedia. And for pressing details and to find a vinyl copy: Behaviour on Discogs.