Left to My Own Devices

An eleven-minute suite compressed into just under five, "Left to My Own Devices" is Pet Shop Boys at their most ambitious — a collage of classical strings, hip-hop rhythm elements, operatic samples, and biographical lyric that takes Tennant from childhood to adulthood through a series of cultural influences: Lenin, Che Guevara, Debussy. The production (aided by Angelo Badalamenti) treats pop music as a museum in which you can hang anything, and the result shouldn't cohere but absolutely does, each section flowing into the next with the logic of memory rather than conventional song structure. The lyric is one of Tennant's finest — specific enough to feel autobiographical, resonant enough to work as a map for anyone who assembled themselves from books, records, and private enthusiasms rather than conforming to available templates. The orchestral opening alone is worth the price of admission, a statement of intent that announces this will not be like anything else you've heard today. For listeners who believe pop music can think.