Pet Shop Boys Rock Toronto

(October 11, 2006) - Last night the Pet Shop Boys were in Toronto performing at the Hummingbird Center on the second stop of their North American tour.

My Friend Joe and I took the day off work to bum around the city, do some shopping, have a little lunch, too bad it rained all day. But that didn't dampen out spirits, we were about to see the Pet Shop Boys. I have always wanted to see them ever since the release of their first album “Please” in May 1986.

When they came on stage, half the crowded rocked to their feet and have sat on their butts. OH no! Its not going to be a conservative crowd, sitting all night with their arms crossed!

Well after the third song...everyone was up and dancing and no one sat down for the balance of the night!

I don’t think I have ever danced so much at a concert.

Also, 90% of the crowd was made up of ‘sisters”, if you know what I mean and they (we) love to dance – it was a great time

Tennant, who spent much of the night clad in top and tails like a circus ringleader, and the customarily ballcapped-and-sunglassed Lowe compensated for their legendary inertness — Tennant generally stands motionless at the mic, Lowe is a model of economic movement behind the keyboard for someone triggering every single sound emanating from the P.A. — by bringing along a pack of dancers and singers.

All performed before a backlit cube that expanded (with the aid of stagehands wearing white jumpsuits like the sperm brigades in the Woody Allen flick) into various, gridlike mutations. But the weird disconnect between the dancers' frantic breaking and posing, the stage dressing's laborious transformations and the Boys' inertiawasn't really overcome until the classic "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)" conjured the mass explosion that would-be audience detonators like "Left To My Own Devices," "Suburbia," the recent Bush- and Blair-baiting single "I'm With Stupid" and its gleaming successor "Minimal," didn't.
Probably part of the act, the set's second half took a turn for the upbeat with a Latino-flavoured "Domino Dancing" and "Flamboyant."

Wind was nicely sucked from sails when Tennant donned a guitar for Release's pretty "Home and Dry." Then all hell broke loose for dry, double-barrelled covers of "Always on My Mind" — augmented by giant Neil and Chris cut-out heads and the backup singers' impressive wardrobe of ridiculous sombreros — and Pet Shop's brilliant medley of U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name" and Frankie Valli's "I Can't Take My Eyes off You" complete with a kick-line by gold lamé-clad cowboys. The requisite "West End Girls" and the sly new "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show" then confirmed the evening as a long-fused blast. - From the Toronto Star