- Neil Tennant's relationship to dance music is more theoretical than one-half of the fourth most successful act on the Billboard dance chart wants you to believe. With his inadequate voice and penchant for marvelously fuzzy concepts like "Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat," Tennant performed like the rock critic he was and the fan he remains. But time, as El Debarge reminds us, will reveal. Thanks to Rollo and David Morales, 1999's Nightlife leavened its bedsit melancholy with strings and a post-Moroder throb, but 2002's Release and 2006's Fundamental concentrated on recognizable singer-songwriter methods and subjects: guitars sometimes played by people, elaborate metaphors, token anti-Tony Blair jokes, etc. etc.
Closer to Blue than a Patrick Cowley compilation, Yes includes more well-observed love songs than perhaps even Chris Lowe can stand. The key track is "Building a Wall," in which Tennant mumbles something about "precocious barbarians" and "Caesar conquering Gaul" but whose chorus tells the real story: He's building a wall not to keep others out, but to keep himself in. Yes is haunted by remembrance of White Parties past, of looking for kicks Tennant didn't really want to find because he was busy worrying about sin and attitutidizing. Madonna's kind of Catholicism isn't for him: Surrender and rue have been Tennant's come-ons for years. But precocious barbarians prefer spritz and Lowe's collection of cool sunglasses. Hence the desiccated throb of "Beautiful People," which is what growing old with your trousers rolled sounds like.
Lowe's hookcraft, as supple as ever, has got the mortar, and Tennant the bricks, but they won't make lots of money this time, despite the production and songwriting assist by Xenomania. While it may reassure smug twinks like us to know that smart middle-aged men won't make fools of themselves chasing young chippies on the dance floor, it wasn't so long ago that Tennant was prepared to take the risk—to maybe put down the book and start falling in love. Let's be grateful, then, that surrender and rue still nourish the Boys' good songs: "Did You See Me Coming?" is the sunshine-on-a-cloudy-day sequel to "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing"; the arpegiatted vibrations of "Love, Etc" convince us that Tennant's acquainted with the damage wrought by beautiful people; and "The Way It Used To Be" bores the melody into the ground until the song explodes in the last third, convincing us that Tennant still has it in him to go slightly mad. For the most part, though, Yes says no too often.
Tracklist 01. Love etc
02. All Over the World
03. Beautiful People
04. Did You See Me Coming?
05. Vulnerable
06. More Than a Dream
07. Building a Wall
08. King of Rome
09. Pandemonium
10. The Way It Used to Be
11. Legacy