It might seem like an unlikely candidate, but I think that "Gin and Jag" by Pet Shop Boys is a seriously underchampioned slice of nightmare bait. In fact, I think it's seriously underchampioned as a track in general, but then that's hardly surprising given that it was never at the forefront of any PSB releases. Its first appearance was as a B-side to PSB's 2009 single "Love, etc". It was later included as part of the 2012 compilation album Format, and as part of Yes: Further Listening. Its role has always been strictly supplementary and odds are good that you've only bothered with it if you're a PSB aficionado/completist. If not, then your loss, as I'd actually rate it a stronger, more fascinating piece than at least ten of the eleven tracks that comprised the standard edition of Yes (which, to be clear, is a very good album).
PSB's music tends to be quite a bit darker than it's given credit for - at the very least, there's often an unsettling undercurrent nestled beneath the poppy synths and Tennant's characteristically aloof-sounding vocals, although rarely as outright sinister as in "Gin and Jag". Probably the song that most rivals it in the terror stakes would be "Luna Park" from their 2006 album Fundamental (which makes eerie analogies between the kind of innocuous thrills sought at an amusement park and the kind of fear-mongering prevalent in the post-9/11 landscape). By comparison, "Gin and Jag" describes a smaller, more intimate encounter between two individuals, one that we swiftly detect has the potential to get incredibly ugly. I can see why Tennant and Lowe didn't see fit to include it the album proper; its menacing, rueful tone would have seemed out of place on a relatively upbeat and (as befits the title) affirmative album like Yes (which is not to suggest that Yes is a feel-good listen; it does bow out with "Legacy", one of the strangest and most perturbing PSB tracks to date).
"Gin and Jag" gives us a hair-raising glimpse into the world of a middle-aged, middle-class man who deeply regrets the choices he's made in life. His self-serving hit and run tactics, both in the world of business ("I made a pile and got out quick") and in relationships ("Never married, no kids that I know of"), have left him financially very well-off and without obligations, but all alone and with seemingly no purpose as he approaches his twilight years. The unsavoury twist being that he's telling the story to a young woman (presumably no older than her early 20s) he's befriended online and has persuaded to visit him in his empty life of material luxury. She, plainly, isn't enjoying the experience and cannot wait to leave, but he has other aspirations for how the evening might go, his genteel demeanor scarcely disguising the bilious mixture of envy, condescension and disdain with which he regards his callow house-caller. It's a set-up that does not exactly spell goodwill.
The title "Gin and Jag" derives from a UK slang term used to describe the upper middle-class, gin (and tonics) and Jaguars (the car, not the cat) being linchpins of the stereotypical middle-class lifestyle. The protagonist admits that his relentless pursuit of such a lifestyle might have been his single biggest failing, and that the trappings have become just that - an entrapment ("I'm a little too gin and jag"). The song does not make for comfortable listening, and not just because it's told from the perspective of a character who is insistent on taking this narrative in a direction we would much sooner it didn't go, but because it's such an intensely claustrophobic piece on both sides. We have two characters caught up in a highly unpleasant situation, each fighting against a very different kind of ticking clock, a struggle emphasised in the repeated warning, "Don't stare at the setting sun." The approaching nightfall is ominous because it underlines the very real, immediate danger facing the young woman; if she does not get out before it becomes too dark to do so, then she could find herself stranded with this prospective rapist. But it's an image that also calls to mind the protagonist's own closing window of opportunity. Beneath his iciness there's a definite sense of panic driving his actions. He attempts to win over his reluctant companion with the reminder that their time on Earth is finite, stating that,"Grab it while you can is my advice, don't waste your bloody time" - advice which, in this context, sounds unmistakably predatory. It's also ironic, for the protagonist has clearly adhered to a code of opportunistic plundering for all of his life, and all he now has to show for it (besides a flashy decanter) is a whole lot of wasted time. He recounts that as a younger man he was "quite a catch", the obvious irony there being that nobody ever did - in part because he was averse to commitment, but it's just as likely that he wound up being left alone because his erstwhile friends and potential suitors deduced that he wasn't worth their time. And now, he too yearns to escape his predicament.
How does he see this flesh-and-blood encounter with his online associate turning things around? Does he seek the sexual conquest of a young woman, the kind he presumably used to date back when he was free and easy and abhorred the thought of a "litter", as a reminder of the glory days, one last gasp of carnal indulgence before he figures he's truly past his prime? Or is there a sincere thread of hope, amid that overpowering lust, that their union may kindle the start of something new and optimistic, to rescue him from his impending dead-end of solitude and despair (the line, "There's a lot of room at the inn tonight" has to signify something, besides emphasising just how empty and lonely his life is in the present day)? If so, then it's clear that the relationship is already turning sour; his old tendencies are dooming him, and now it's purely a matter of just how grisly this will get.
What makes "Gin and Jag" such a complex track, and all the more unsettling for it, is that it not only narrates this potentially gruesome scenario from the perspective of the aspiring perpetrator, but that perpetrator is depicted as, if not sympathetic, then recognisably human. The fears he conveys are entirely relatable ones. He recognises that he's growing old, and the only thing that terrifies him more than having to acknowledge that the best years of his life may be long behind him is the realisation that those years were all misspent. He's a sorrowful figure, but we never lose sight of how dangerous he is, thanks to the unpleasantly double-edged nature of his lamenting, fusing expressions of personal regret with bitter feelings of disdain for the woman in his company - for example, "Don't write me off as an old has-been, it's not all over yet", which is a desperate attempt to reassure himself that he may still have a few golden years left ahead of him (probably not the case), and also a threat directed at his young captive not to assume that his wretchedness makes him harmless (on that point he has credibility). Nowhere is this more evident than in the proverb accompanying those repeated warnings about the sun. "Youth is wasted on the young" (an expression often attributed to George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, among others, although its actual origins are debatable) is a maxim based on the observation that most people don't appreciate how precious youth is until they've lost it. Here, it's used as an admission of the protagonist's own squandered youth, and his realisation that his recklessness and lack of foresight has led to his current predicament, but there's a derisiveness about it too, revealing just how viciously he envies this jejune woman with her whole life still ahead of her. The insinuation is that he sees her as unworthy of the qualities that he himself has wasted, and this is the most frighteningly malignant aspect of the song, suggesting that his predatory advances are rooted not merely in lust, but in a spiteful, willfully malicious desire to cut her down while she's still in her prime. Obviously, he's not getting his own youth back, but perhaps he can ensnare an unmindful victim to join him, if not as a romantic partner, then as a fellow sufferer in his world of stagnant misery. His contempt for the younger generation becomes all the more harrowing when we consider that it was, in all odds, the woman's youthful inexperience that enabled her to be drawn into such a perilous situation in the first place. She would, presumably, be quite naive for him to have gotten as far with her as he has, although her apparent fixation with the outside scenery implies that she is already cottoning on (too late?) to her mistake. Toward the end of the song, he ostensibly offers her a way out, with the passive-aggressive retort, "If you don't want to give it a go tonight, you may as well pack your bags" (possibly in a preemptive attempt at rejection before she has the chance to do it to him). But then that sun is already setting outside.
At the very end, the protagonist appears to acknowledge that for him, there can be no escape, as he resigns himself to his private hell with the repeated acknowledgement that, "I'm a little too gin and jag". Whether or not he will force this unfortunate young woman to share in his entrapment is a question that's left dangling.
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