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Although the Pet Shop Boys are still riding out the successful release of their tenth studio album Yes, they have occasionally come forward to discuss a few collaborations that didn’t make it onto the album.

One of those failed collaborations was with the legendary super producer Brian Eno, as previously reported (the creative process between duo and producer more or less just “fizzled out”). 

Not all of the collaborations failed, however, and those that did make it on the album are quite good. For example, when Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant met with Final Fantasy’s Owen Pallett over some recording equipment, the sparks couldn’t help but fly.  Owen and the Boys had quite the opposite chemistry as the same duo alongside Brian Eno, it seems.

Tennant told Exclaim! that when the Pet Shop Boys worked with Owen, who is based out of Toronto, it was akin to body building for the duo’s synth pop sound.  Tennant professes his love for the latest album by the Last Shadow Puppets (an album which Pallett helped to produce and arrange), on which he thought the arrangements had a muscular quality, especially concerning the cello and brass on the album. 
“He does this slightly sixties thing where some of the rhythm's in the orchestra, like playing gorgeous chords or something,” Tennant said. “And on 'Legacy' he appreciated that it was meant to be a bit of an epic. He wrote beautiful stuff in that. The trumpet has an amazing nautical kind of theme.”

Pallett is the co-producer on Yes who is not oft mentioned (at least, he does not garner the amount of words per article that the album’s other co-producer, Xenomania, usually requires), yet his orchestral arrangements are integral to the Pet Shop Boys’ modern synth pop album.