An electric summer’s evening with the Pet Shop Boys in South Wales.

In 2014, I was experiencing something of a renaissance of my interest in several of my favourite bands. Mansun may have split more than a decade previously, but Paul Draper’s upcoming solo project was creating a flurry of activity within the fandom and re-igniting my interest. The Manic Street Preachers had proved to me in April that they still were the greatest rock band in the world. Now, in June, it was time to rekindle my pop interests, with the band who had launched my life as a music fan when I was a young teen: the Pet Shop Boys.

As with the Manics, I’d gone through a period of disinterest in the Pet Shop Boys’ output at the start of the decade. Their 2012 album “Elysium” had bored me to such an extent that I’m not sure to this day if I’ve ever made it all the way through listening to it. However, in 2013 they came storming back with the stunning “Electric”, a dazzlingly inventive collection of fizzing and fierce pop-dance tunes, and I was back in love with the band.

I didn’t quite have my wits about me enough in 2013 to make it their London gig on the Electric tour, but in 2014, when they announced a string of extra dates elsewhere in the UK, a genius plan was hatched. Throughout my 30s, my love for music had been supplanted in a big way by my obsession for Doctor Who, but now, as my musical loves were slowly being rekindled one by one, I had a chance to combine the two obsessions. And so I made my way to Cardiff for a weekend filled with a visit to the Doctor Who Experience on the Saturday, and on Sunday, this fantastic gig from the Pet Shop Boys.

The bad news, however, is that I recorded nothing about this gig in my diary. Happily, however, this was the very last gig I attended for which I have no record whatsoever, and at least I do have the below gallery of dodgy iPhone pics to share with you to give some sense of this electric night in Cardiff. The good news is, by the time I write about my next Pet Shop Boys gigs in 2017, I will have full reports to work from. And probably some more dodgy iPhone pics too.