Fundamental
- Pet Shop Boys
- Band Name: Pet Shop Boys
- Record Label: Rhino / Parlophone
- Release Date: Jun 27, 2006
- Critic Score
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The Pet Shop Boys' best album in over a decade, sitting neatly between their previous career highpoints of Very and Behaviour.
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100Fundamental is the group's most inspired album in nearly a decade.
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Fundamental offers pleasure as rewarding as The Magic Mountain or Glenlivet 18--indulgences best enjoyed as you approach the half-century mark, when your imagination is keen to leisured elongations of familiar tropes or newly appreciative of exotic sumptuousness.
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90'Fundamental' will not only be rated up there among the Pet Shop Boys finest albums -- it's also arguably the best electro pop record we've heard in years.
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It would be unthinkable to imagine a more pleasurable listen coming along in 2006.
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Balance[s] orchestral pomp with au courant club grooves. [30 Jun 2006, p.161]
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80Fundamental ingeniously explores political chicanery through imaginative set pieces about private relationships. [Aug 2006, p.113]
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The majority of Fundamental is like the majority of their great album Behavior in that repeat listens are required to do these rich songs justice.
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80It's like 10 years of treading water never happened. [Jun 2006, p.118]
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80Like Confessions on a Dance Floor, Fundamental uses squelchy electro-disco grooves that smuggle sly pop-culture commentary. [Aug 2006, p.83]
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80Focusing on New Labour's trials has reconnected the Pet Shop Boys with something of their essence.
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80Fundamental is the thinking person's electropop album of 2006 so far.
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You're unlikely to encounter another pioneering techno-pop act entering its third decade with style and substance largely intact.
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70"Fundamental" is the sound of the Pet Shop Boys reborn, and mindful of the important role they fill in the pop family.
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Trevor Horn's production has a pleasing fullness, opening the melodies without smothering them.
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65Much of it seems strangely blank, neither great nor at all sub-par.
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There's little on PSB's album that matches the big twizzly dunce-hatted glory of their 'Very' peak. [20 May 2006, p.33]
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60You wish Neil and Chris had hooked up with a younger, switched-on, even more sympathetic producer. [Jun 2006, p.110]
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60For every moment of cynical dance pop genius, there's a dull midtempo dirge bereft of decent hooks.
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60For greatness, look to the irresistibly melodic "Twentieth Century," the New Order-hued "Minimal" and the Diane Warren-penned ballad "Numb."
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A politically charged album that's free of musical sparks.
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40[An] underwhelming collection of moderately sweeping, mildly elegant arena pop. [Jun 2006, p.108]
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 22 out of 26
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Mixed: 3 out of 26
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Negative: 1 out of 26
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JamieM.10
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CliffordF9
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mikhail10Best album of the year.