"Go West" (1993)

[listen]

The idea that Very is the grand unified statement by the Pet Shop Boys of a pro-disco, anti-rock ethos and way of life is obviously reinforced by finishing off the album on the high note of a cover of the Village People. "Go West" is almost certainly not recognizable to the folks who gyrate to the VP at sports events and political rallies. Even this Pet Shop Boys version was a top 10 hit practically everywhere else but the US (which appears to be eternally stuck at the Young Men's Christian Association figuratively speaking until its citizens can come to terms with what the song is about, if they ever can). This "Go West" is large and in charge—iconic, of course, and wry, double of course, and furthermore exuberantly joyful. The ghost of the Village People as the '70s turned to the '80s and AIDS arrived lurks in the background of this song about moving to San Francisco. Indeed, yearning for liberation broods over the entire album. But the Pet Shop Boys have made this song all theirs, respecting the disco drills and thrills but tarting it up with musical flourishes like a lusty men's chorus and various production tricks already familiar from the foregoing 11 tracks (the soul singer Sylvia Mason-James, for example, dialed down to the mush of the mix where somehow she stands out even more). After a brief overture, "Go West" proceeds directly to the business of the dance song, doing what they are all intended to do at base level, which is get you on your feet and moving. Richard Simmons approves this track, I am certain. It moves and it grooves and then finally it hits an exquisite dance club high point at 4:25. I have always wished they rolled with it from there for the full eight minutes the track lasts or more. Instead, it closes down early, followed by two full minutes of silence (enough time too often to forget the album is still on) and then a snippet of a hidden track sung by Chris Lowe. The 1992 12-inch version of "Go West" (available now in the Further Listening package) is closer to an ideal of a seamless transition into the second album Relentless, which is still sadly the limited property only of early purchasers of the UK release, collectors, and/or ardent fans (not available on streaming but YouTube has it in full). Relentless affords another 37 minutes of dance groove on six more tracks, all in the vein or close to it of the high point in "Go West." The video for the 12-inch version is an interesting mash of US and USSR imagery, making New York City the metaphorical endpoint of the move west, with Mason-James standing in as the Statue of Liberty. Between the cartoony show-biz performance style of the Village People and the beautiful fantasies of liberation in the West (dreams of San Francisco still alive in 1993), the album's big finish is an ecstatically blissful climax to the extended formally informal coming out party of Very: disco, gay, sentimental, and capable of great flights.