Customer Reviews

Behavior.

5 star:		(58)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a truly outstanding album. Of the various Pet Shop Boys albums, all of which I consider excellent, this is by far my favorite. I still listen to this album regularly, fifteen years after I bought it. In some ways I appreciate it even more now than I did when I first bought, if only because songs like "Being Boring" or "October Symphony" have become easier to relate to as I have aged. Moreover, it doesn't date itself at all. You could listen to it and not really pin it down to a particular year or even decade.

The album, perhaps more so than any of the other PSB albums, has a very consistent voice and mood. I don't know if it was intended as a concept album, I doubt it was, but it certainly could have been one. The songs all hang together as if they are pieces from the life of a specific person looking back over their life filled with regret, loneliness, and a sense of loss.

Other PSB albums may have a consistent musical style, but they are more like collections of songs, whereas this hangs together as a unified and cohesive piece of work. It is the only PSB album that I feel obligated to listen to from start to finish, with the tracks in their original order.

This may sound bizarre, but I would compare it to Steely Dan's "Gaucho" in terms of its timelessness, cohesiveness, and sense of place.

Behaviour perfectly captures the other side of Pet Shop Boys. Considered. Quiet. Very introspective. Adult. This is an incredible set of songs, one I have yet to tire of. And it hasn't aged a bit like some of their earlier material. I think it is the best the Boys have to offer. In terms of consistant songwriting, lush, rich, layered instumentation and production, and some of Neil Tennant's best vocal performances. Incredibly heartfelt and full of nuances. Every song on this disc is a winner. Nothing here that can be called "camp" or "ironic" ( things PSB have often catered to ). Behaviour is, along with "Very", the peak of the Tennant/Lowe partnership. They have since come very close at times to capturing what is in spades on Behaviour, but they have yet to better it, and I don't think they ever will. Highly recommended.

This is what a "real" album sounds like, when a band isn't focused on generating two or three singles and padding the rest with filler.

Aside from being a flawless masterpiece, Behavior is a time-capsule of the first years of the nineties. Spirits were high, then, as the end of the eighties saw the tumbling of the Berlin wall, and the thawing of the Cold War. Sure, AIDS was becoming a global epidemic, but there was a grain of hope. Does anyone feel hope in 2006?

Behavior has many things going for it. After scoring a few hits on their prior albums, PSB were free to experiment. The songwriting is top-notch, with briliant lyrics that never sound trite or gimmicky. Each song is carefully crafted, with just the right sound. And, in my opinion, Neil's singing has never sounded better.

As other reviewers have stated, you can't pick our the highlights, because the whole album is a highlight. You have wistful songs (It's Only the Wind, Jealousy, My October Symphony, Nervously), nostalgic songs (Being Boring), urgent songs (This Must Be the Place I Waited Years to Leave, The End of the World), a sexy ballad (To Face the Truth), burning disco (So Hard), and catchy pop (How Can You Expect to be Taken Seriously?).

Although some of the tracks are filled with dry humor and sentiment, they never become maudlin, i.e. Morrissey at his worst. And the most disco-sounding song is nevertheless poignant and accusatory.

I could go on and on forever, but Behavior speaks volumes about itself. It is the definition of perfection.

Well... Ten years after this album was released... and I still listen to it like if I had just bought it yesterday. This is, I believe, the best PSB album ever. Something that came in a long process of maturing their art. This is one of those albums that we can listen to without changing tracks: we can go through it from start to finnish and every track seems like a beautifully crafted song, written with taste, heart and wit. Many albums came after this one and none of them came closer in quality to "Behaviour". "Being Boring" is a master song full of ideas and deep toughts (about the times, Aids, youth, etc.). "To Face the Truth" and "Only the Wind" have a warmth that is quite rare (and in fact, I can't recall having the same feeling about a song since). "My October Symphony" (my favourite) is a fantasticaly produced piece with a string quartet that, in a way, previews many things that other artists would do in the subsequent years. Actually, this one is the last of the three "white" albums (the others are "Please" and "Actually") and it marks the end of that journey. In fact, one of the most important things about this album is that it clearly marks the duos's passage from an 80's sound to the 90's sound. And they did it with this album. "Very" came 2 or 3 years after this album and is quite good (the ones who followed are a downhill...) but "Behaviour" is simply one of the best pop albums ever released. It stands proudly along the best albums pop music ever produced. Listen to it carefully and enjoy. Today I still catch myself singing some of those songs.

This album is simply astounding as it showcases how lush and beautiful electro-pop can sound. You will begin to realize how talented Neil and Chris are as each song unveils and unwinds into an amazing tapestry of sound.

You can hear a whole orchestra perform and yet you try to fathom which is real and which is synthesized. The best part is the end result is just so beautiful you wouldn't bother to figure out anymore how they did it.

I loved "To face the truth" as the beauty of this piece only hits you after a few hearings.
"My October Symphony" is I think a labour of love as the song will linger in your mind for the next few days after you have listened to it for the first time. Listen towards the end when the Boys employ the hardly used cello for that heart-string tugging effect. So moving!
"Only the wind" is another soul stirring song as Neil Tennant's almost angelic voice plays with the simplistic melody.
And boy, are the fast songs good! The Boys drive "So hard" and proves that "Being Boring" is not what you are when you own this CD!

The other songs are also very good as well and there are no fillers here. I will be their fan for life!

Behavior is my fav from them. I love the less disco sound on this one. Some of there stuff is to diso for me. This is a elctro pop gem. Every synth fanatic should own this.

Were it not for "How can you expect to be taken seriously?" and "The end of the world", this would be a perfect album. Not that these are bad songs, but they simply don't stand up to the brilliance that this album otherwise has going through every track. Too bad they didn't include "Miserablism" instead - that is a wonderful song which was recorded at the same time. This album is filled with emotional, vulnerable, beautiful songwriting with surface appeal yet incredible depth. "So hard" is one of the most wonderful, sinister pop songs ever written. I could go on and on.

I can't even begin to say how incredible this CD is. Like their other albums, Behaviour perfectly showcases Neil and Chris' ever-evolving genius. Songs like Being Boring and Nervously can move you to tears; So Hard and Jealousy bring back that feeling of despair and dejection you felt when your boyfriend dumped you. If you want to make your experience COMPLETE: buy the rerelease of the album with the additional CD: Further Listening. The best track is Jealousy (extended version). It is the most beautiful piece of music I have ever heard, possibly comparable to the classical genius of Mozart and Beethoven. Cheers to the Pet Shop Boys for creating almost 20 years of beautiful, ironic, fun, introspectively dark, and timeless music. The songwriting of Tennant/Lowe, so underappreciated here in the states, definitely has and will always leave its mark on history. Ciao!

The Pet Shop Boys in 1990 apparently didn't see why a synth-driven album had to be soulless or contain redundant lyrics. Here we have articulate songs involving multiple emotions which just happen to employ the keyboard wizardry of house and techno music rather than, say, the acoustic guitar. The mood here, however, isn't dancehall heat, but Welschmertz and ennui.

"Being Boring" is a complex study in nostalgia. It makes references to the tragedy of AIDS: "All the people I was kissing/ Some are here and some are missing in the 1990s." The PSB tackled this issue before in "It Couldn't Happen Here" and would again in "Dreaming of the Queen."

"This Must Be the Place I Waited Years to Leave" describes the hell of British boarding schools. "To face the Truth" is a beautiful study of adultery containing the neat double entendre "I daren't expose the proof," referring both to evidence and a camera-wielding private detective. "How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously?" laces into egomaniacal rock stars (Somehow I think of U2), and "Only the Wind" catches an alcoholic in the midst of his denials. Just by tackling smart adult themes, the album has far exceeded the expectations of the synth-pop genre.

And I think its second half is even better! "My October Symphony," whose wonderful music sounds like something from Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On?" updated for a 2003 chill-out disc, talks about a Russian composer's inability to write odes to a country going through the tumult of Perestroika. "So hard" pits a pair of adulterous but wily lovers against each other, resulting in a witty piece of trance. "Nervously," with its synth throbbing like a beating heart, tells the tale of two young gay men stammering their way through their first thrilling but nerve-wracking flirtations. "The End of the World" features a teen girl's tantrum and gently chides her for seeing a night without a boyfriend's phone call as cataclysmic; such is the perspective of the young! "Jealousy" wraps things up with an ode to envy that builds like a Broadway production number.

All in all, this is far more intelligent than dance music has a right to be. You can hear the influence of Depeche Mode, Erasure, and New Order here, but none of them captured the pristine beauty or glamorous sadness of this record.

well it's already 11 years since Pet Shop Boys wrote this so underrated masterpiece...Of course it's supposed to be their musical peak, someone could say that after this they started their kind of "decadence", which is arguable but anyway shows the power and the centrality of this wonderful album. This is where their image too has been at the most, I wouldn't say "cold", because this is their most moving and emotional group of songs, but anyway contained, natural, really sort of philosophical, just before pointy hats...you can see it from the cover of the record This is such a sad record, but at the same time it's full of disappointment and hope. Being Boring is one the most perfect and pure portraits of friendship and loss feeling ever written, but the whole album moves to these themes with an increasing emotional power and ironic stuff about buried feelings and social powers ("this must be the place", the stunning orchestrated "only the wind", "so hard" and "jealousy"). The only slightly out of album's feeling note,on the production, is "seriously", which released as a single remix in 1991 was kept slower, more hip-hop and focused on the haunting sarcasm of Tennant's words against the rock'n roll stars supposed to be saving the planet with their only efforce. If "Dj culture" and "Miserablism" were now in the record, they would fit really well, i think, and it would be even more stunning than now. Pet Shop Boys at their deepest and not-so-easy side, though as ever pop...Don't you think PSB are a bit underrated today? In a world of lab-created Aguileras,on years seen Behaviour stuff only once or twice on MTV and all the rest of it, which is a shame. Will one day this magical album surface for a while in people's ears?