I know this review has taken its time – but its not as if there are gigs to go to. Hell, there’s nothing to go to. There’s just a world out there and it’s weird and scary and exhausting and I thought none of us really thought that 2020 would look like this at all. I never thought I’d be spending six months working from home, terrified of the outside world, wearing a facemask everytime I did go out there, and not going to gigs.

In the pre-Covid world, “Hotspot” is another Pet Shop Boys album, with an evolution over the past few years. The lines between albums blur as such – some of the songs on this record were written nearly a decade ago and held back from previous albums – whilst some of the songs written for this are being reworked for the next Pet Shop Boys album, whenever and whatever that is.

First and foremost, as far as Pet Shop Boys records go, “HotSpot” is a great, solid and consistent addition. Aside from the problematic production, it’s a well presented and delivered selection of good, often great songs that are utterly Pet Shop Boys. You know what you’re getting with them, heartbreak disco bangers with clever lyrics and a somewhat detached delivery. That adrenalin rush that’s melded with sad robot songs. Anyone could write a Pet Shop Boys, or at least think they do, because they make it look and sound easy. But the fact anyone could… doesn’t mean anyone else does.

“Dreamland” is the first single, and sounds like it came off the Pet Shop Boys production line fully formed. “Monkey Business” is the next big single, and it sounds a bit cynical, a bit formulaic, a bit… calculated. Whereas most PSB material has an essential sincere heart to it, this song seems to have all the things but not the soul. “I Don’t Wanna (Go Out)” uncannily predicted the Covid crisis, and is also a fiercely divisive song. Some fans hate it.

There’s also an issue with sequencing : the record veers between moods and tempos abruptly in a way that detracts from the overall cumulative effect.

Whilst the performance and sounds on this album are more than fine, the production is overdone : the album is mastered very very loudly, with rampant and frequent distortion of frequencies and bass that makes it too garish to fully understand. I can tell there’s great songs in here, but they’re lost in translation sometimes. Which means that the relatively subtle “Burning The Heather” feels like being hit over the head by a brick wrapped in a towel. “Will-o-The-Wisp” is a great opener : one of those songs that – like a great many openers – grabs you by the neck and demands you listen. It’s designed, like much of this album, for live performance : for being in vast halls with lasers as you dance with your friends.

Most bands get a bit crap when they get older, and some make music out of habit and not because they have anything to say or anything worth hearing. This is certainly not one of those albums. It’s a good album, not a great one, where somehow the mastering choices – and the sequencing - detract from the overall effect of the album. The Pet Shop Boys have not made a bad album, and they’re not about to start now, but this isn’t their best album by a long way.