Synth duos: Two against the world

Why synth pop has been music to our ears since the '70s

From the early '70s to Ghostland Observatory today, the synth duo keeps on keepin' on. Sometimes it's two guys, sometimes a guy and a girl, and sometimes, very rarely, two girls. Sometimes it's more in fashion (the early 1980s come to mind) than other times (the grunge era). But two people somewhere are always experimenting with the format. Why is that?

Synth duos boil the "band" idea down as far as you can get before getting into the area of solo act, which is a whole different pop concept. Couplehood is such a primal idea that the synth duo contains an air of mystery that regular rock bands do not, especially when one stays quiet, behind the keyboards, and the other is the focus of attention. Who are these two people? What is their connection? Are they friends? Lovers? Are they gay? Straight? One delivers the lyrics, one generates the sound.

While the avant-garde electronic duo Silver Apples preceded them by a few years, for our purposes the New York proto-punk band Suicide is the beginning of the synth-pop duo.

Formed by artists Martin Rev and Alan Vega as hippy worldviews dissolved into the trashy, paranoid Manhattan of the '70s, Suicide was genuinely extraordinary, a root integer of synth pop, new wave, punk, industrial dance, techno and post-punk, not to mention the Bruce Springsteen song "State Trooper," which almost sounds like a Suicide tribute.

On the band's amazing self-titled first album, Rev played simple, repeated riffs on an organ or synth, first-generation drum machine puttering along, while Vega's reverbed, Elvis-ish voice and creepy hostility seem a genuine force. The combination was and is like nothing else in rock. Check out "Ghost Rider" for punk before punk and "Frankie Teardrop" for a howl of urban despair that will chill your blood and ruin your day.

With the rise of new wave and more-portable synthesizers, the synth duo exploded. Dozens of bands appeared all over the place. Soft Cell emphasized the moments when love turns sleazy, Marc Almond's cabaret vocals pushing against David Ball's synths. "Tainted Love" was, of course, the smash hit, but that's only part of their story.

Eurythmics were cold pop idols — few voices have ever meshed with synths better than Annie Lennox's alto wail, but often she seemed more the robot than Dave Stewart.

Yaz (Yazoo in the UK) were similarly constructed — the bluesy Alison "Alf" Moyet up front, with former Depeche Mode songwriter Vince Clarke twiddling with knobs, but few new-wave acts of any sort made an album as perfect as Yaz's moving debut "Upstairs at Eric's."

As LCD Soundsystem singer James Murphy put it in his epochal song "Losing My Edge," "I hear you're buying a synthesizer and an arpeggiator and are throwing your computer out the window because you want to make something real. You want to make a Yaz record."

It's funny to hear Murphy talk about "realness" related to synth pop because in an era when rock equaled real, synth-pop acts seemed anything but "real." The music was electronic, the band was a mere two people, no matter that Suicide's hostility was pure punk rock or that Pet Shop Boys' songcraft and emotion easily equal the Beach Boys. Heck yes, there's a realness here.

Clarke, of course, went on to worldwide fame with the synth-pop duo Erasure, as gay hyperdiva Andy Bell's giant voice translated Clarke's electronic burbles into pop smashes. The Pet Shop Boys were simply some of the best songwriters the UK produced in the 1980s and 1990s, from early radio singles such as "West End Girls" to the moving AIDS anthem "Being Boring" to the New Order rip-off "Heart" to their still-jaw-dropping cover of "Always On My Mind." It seemed for a while there as if Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe could do no wrong.

The stuff popped up here and there in the 1990s. (Anyone remember Romania? No? Ah well.), even going virtual now and then. Were Missy Elliot and Timbaland a synth duo? In everything but name, absolutely.

On Elliot's first few albums, especially the 1997 debut, "Supa Dupa Fly," Timbaland's stuttering, slipping beats and Missy's casual rapping made for the most startling pop of the late 1990s.

Missy's a solo act, but the vibe is the same. The synth duo is just two people — the singer and the song. One's at the mercy of the audience, selling it all to the crowd; one's hanging back and standing still, making music with machines. Together, it's two against the world.

— Joe Gross