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Silver Age

Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 1999
Original album - Format
Producer - Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - Nightlife 2017 reissue Further Listening 1996-2000 bonus disc
Other releases - bonus track with single "I Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give It Any More"; bonus disc with the U.S. "special edition" of Nightlife

A slow, ponderous track—a bonus on the "I Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give It Any More" single—that nevertheless has a lot going for it: a gorgeous melody, an adventurous production, and one of Neil's more impressionistic lyrics. Without any background information from its author, it's hard to make out what this song is "about" except that it seems to harken back an earlier time, the "silver age" of the title, mainly to suggest that it may not have been such a silver age after all, but rather a "silver rage." The music supports this, its plodding rhythm and often metallic sound strongly suggesting the "Industrial Age" of great, powerful steam-driven machines.

Neil has unequivocally stated, however (in the July 1999 issue of Literally), that this is one of his "Russian songs." As he puts it, "The Silver Age is the period in Russia before the First World War…. A period of optimism." Yet the song's pervasive air of foreboding ("earthquakes predicted … a total eclipse of the sun and the moon") hints strongly at the terrible strife that lies just ahead: the war and the Russian Revolution. Later, in the Format booklet interview and even more specifically in One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem, Neil pointed to "July 1914," a poem by the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, as an inspiration for this song. Neil went on to describe the song as "a series of snapshots of St. Petersburg at the end of the Tsarist era…."

But such an understanding is hardly necessary to enjoy this track, which seems to strive more for mood than for meaning. It does so quite effectively: it has reams of mood. But that's pretty much what impressionism is all about, isn't it?

Annotations

As noted above, the lyrics refer in a rather imagistic fashion to the period in Russia from 1901 to 1914, a "Silver Age" filled with optimism and a flourishing of the arts, although Neil has described it also as the output of "a nervous and reactionary regime trying to asset itself in the face of advancing modernism…." An overwhelming air of foreboding ("It's very atmospheric," says Neil) hangs over the song. After all, Russia was on the verge of the disastrous First World War and the communist revolution that would follow in its wake.
Also as noted above, the poetry of Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966), particularly her poem "July 1914," was a specific inspiration for this track. She came to be known as "The Soul of the Silver Age."
"Difficult music" – The first decades of the twentieth century saw composers experimenting with dissonance, atonality, unconventional rhythms, and other traits that much of the concert-going public found "difficult" to appreciate. Prominent at this time among the notable composers of "difficult music" was the Russian Igor Stravinsky, whose ballet scores The Firebird and The Rite of Spring premiered in 1910 and 1913, respectively. The first performance of the latter, in fact, sparked a riot (though as much if not more on account of the violent, erotically charged dancing as for the music itself).
Contributing mightily to the song's mood of foreboding is its apocalyptic final verse, which curiously seems to describe an astronomical impossibility: "a total eclipse of the sun and the moon." An eclipse of the sun and the moon cannot occur simultaneously, as the lyrics would seem to suggest. A solar eclipse occurs only when the moon is directly between the earth and the sun, whereas a lunar eclipse occurs only when the earth is directly between the moon and the sun. The two cannot occur at the same time. Perhaps this intimation of impossibility is merely designed to heighten the apocalyptic mood.
Speaking of that "total eclipse" line ("And someday soon, a total eclipse of the sun and the moon"), one of my site visitors has pointed out what may or may not be a remarkable coincidence: "Silver Age" was a b-side of the single "I Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give It Any More," whereas the instrumental "Casting a Shadow"—inspired by, named for, and debuted during the solar eclipse of August 11, 1999—was one of the b-sides of the very next single, "New York City Boy." Then again, perhaps it was no coincidence at all. It's conceivable that Neil and Chris were intentionally clueing us in on the inspiration for the upcoming b-side, which could only have been grasped and appreciated in hindsight. But isn't that in the very nature of clues?

List cross-references

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