NEARING the end of their world tour which started in March 2013, the Pet Shop Boys put on two spell-binding nights at the Sage, Gateshead – just over the water from the hometown of lead-singer, Neil Tennant.

Although the tour is to promote their 12th album, Electric, they played a set featuring their greatest hits from their 30-year career – It’s A Sin, Go West, Always on My Mind, Opportunities, Rent, the obligatory West End Girls and a magnificent Suburbia.

Tennant, recently turned 60, and his keyboardist Chris Lowe are rather static on stage – Tennant patrols in preposterous costumes whereas Lowe doesn’t move behind his impenetrable sunglasses – but any deficiencies were more than made up by a dazzling display of lights and projections, and a pair of brilliant loose-limbed dancers.

The dancers’ faces were never revealed. They were covered by paganistic animal masks, large lampshades or supersized bath sponges.

For I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind of Thing, Tennant himself appeared in a shiny, gold antelope mask, and began singing: “Ask me why, I say it’s most unusual.” This laugh-out-loud moment was eclipsed by the creative comedy of Love Etc, with Tennant and Lowe lying motionless in bed with projections of writhing bodies thrown onto their sheets.

For us seated beneath a low balcony at the very back of the Sage, the sound was rather foggy, and lacked the usual crystal clarity of the venue.

Rather than finish on a high with an old No 1, the show bravely ended with Vocal, taken from the new album.

With an intelligent lyric, a wistful tune and a thumping electro-production, it shows that the Boys’ most recent music is as good and as relevant as it has ever been.