Erasure • Features • Biography
Nightbird / Tour (2005)
There have been some changes in the world of Erasure. Not personnel changes it always was and always is just the two of them, Andy Bell and Vince Clarke. And not the kind of "rock'n' roll" ructions that usually attend bands who've been making music for a couple of decades, or have sold records in the volume (25 million and counting) that this pair have - they're too honest in their friendship, to let music biz/celebrity nonsense get in the way.
Anyhow, having five Number One albums, ten Top 20 albums and sixteen Top Ten singles gives you a kind of grounding. You don't get to become one of the most successful pop duos of all time, an influence on a generation of pop fans, electronic lovers and dance aficionados, by ever copping out or treading water. Twenty-nine hit singles in a row speaks of a certain kind of quality and consistency.
Rehabilitating ABBA long before Mamma Mia! and the rest of Nineties culture's passion for the Swedish maestros tells of a certain kind of music-loving wit and style. Being sexual trailblazers with a vocally "out" - and outrageously dressed - frontman before this was as "acceptable" as it is now tells of confidence and, yes, daring.
A raft of legendary videos demonstrates an innate understanding of the visual mechanics of pop. A succession of live extravaganzas illustrates a flair for theatrical innovation. You wouldn't be celebrating your 20th anniversary if your talents were anything other than soul-deep.
No, the changes here are simpler than that, and as a result more powerful.
As Bell and Clarke are the first to admit, their last three studio albums before Other People's Songs (2003) - Erasure (1995), Cowboy (1997), Loveboat (2000) - were more introspective, more experimental. But as they approached their 11th studio album and third decade together - another benchmark in a uniquely storied career - Bell and Clarke found themselves excited and raring to go. Gee'd up anew by the possibilities inherent in their gold-standard hitmaking partnership.
"The last couple of albums were a bit moody and down," says Bell, as characteristically honest and direct as usual. "I'm so much happier with everything now, and so is Vince. You can hear it in the music. This is easily the best thing we've done for a long time."
"Andy is as excited about this record as he was when we first started releasing records," concurs Clarke. "He's like a little kid. And the record is more upbeat. We're both in a good spiritual place."
What better way, then, to launch another new phase of classic songwriting and innovative musicianship than with a record as uplifting, shiny and new as Nightbird?
Ordinarily, Andy Bell writes his lyrics in isolation, usually at home in North London. Indeed, he'd come up with some at the tail end of 2002, just as Erasure finished work on their last album, their covers collection Other People's Songs. But this time round, for the bulk of the words he flew to New York in early 2004, where Clarke has been living for the last couple of years. He put himself in his partner's environment, and merrily wrote away. No matter that it was February and nut-numbingly cold: flush with enthusiasm they rattled through six new songs.
For his part, Clarke had been busy exploring new working methods. Ever the technical innovator, he had crafted himself an artist's garret/studio based round a computer and two speakers in his apartment. He also found a decent, unshowy, hardworking little basement studio two blocks away in Brooklyn. Erasure had road-tested this new set-up in autumn 2003, recording a series of acoustic versions of highlights from their back catalogue.
"We just felt there were songs on our albums that had been missed as songs," says Clarke - understandable given that their canon tops 100 songs. "We found this cool guitarist [Steve Walsh] with a cool studio [Union Street] and decided to use both. He put the thing together.
It was great going back through those songs, some of which I hadn't listened to properly since we made them - suddenly you heard some of the naivety that was in there in the first place."
The idea, says Bell, was "to show the songs in a different light, and show that they could work on whatever instrument, synthesisers or guitars. It makes such a different singing with acoustic instruments - there's more space, it seems. When you're using electronics they soak up part of the voice. Whereas [with] strings, the voice seems to vibrate off of them."
Emboldened by this New York recording experience - Erasure had had an abortive attempt at recording there once before, in Electric Lady Studios 15 years previously - and suitably emancipated from the pressures of deadlines or costs, Erasure worked at a feverish pace on Nightbird.
Ever the technical innovator, Clarke made good use of the internet. He'd email rough versions of songs to programmer Jon "JC" Collyer in London, and the two would then bat ideas back and forth. It was a speedy and liberating way to work.
"You can wake up in the morning and decide on what song you want to work on," notes Clarke, who had done a remix for Wit in precisely this manner. "And," adds this notably restless workaholic, "you don't have to wait for people to turn up."
The (ahem) net result is Erasure's most relaxed, upbeat and frankly zingy album in ages. As Clarke says, the combined effect of reappraising their own catalogue in the acoustic sessions and, on the covers album, dissecting and reassembling familiar songs, gave the pair a renewed enthusiasm for the songwriting process.
'Here I Go Impossible Again' is a thumping dance anthem that could stand toe-to-toe with the likes of 'Stop!' and 'Love To Hate You'. 'Breathe', the first single, is a classically soulful Erasure single, slyly infectious, full of twinkling keyboard effects, and built to be sung at full volume by a concert hall full of beaming people.
"I really like the melody on that one," says pop alchemist Bell, "full of long notes. Writing it was thinking, what word can you use for a long note? 'Breathe' was the most simple one. I'm not a big fan or anything, just certain songs, but I really like some of The Corrs stuff and Dido's stuff: really simple but quite hypnotic. Lyrically, it's about having a respite, taking time out, saying that you've really overdone it."
"That was just a really nice chord change that came easily," chips in Clarke. "You do these things on micro cassette and then piece it together on the computer and think, 'oh yeah, this has got really nice soulful twist'. Those little moments of magic are still what it's all about. We've always been a band for whom the most important thing is the melody. And if it has twist to it, then that twist resolves itself and goes back to the original melody, it still gives me goosebumps."
The title of Erasure's 11th album is a reference to Andy Bell's insomnia, "and living through the night. Generally I don't get up till about noon. So it's a bit of struggle when I have gym at 12. I've always been like that, since I was a kid - I have all these things in my head. I'm a bit of a worrier, and have inherited my mother's worry furrow. But I've Botoxed it out."
In contrast, he says, "Vince is a day bunny. He's on farm hours. He's totally the opposite to me, and it's worked over the years."
A good thing, and an obvious one. In 2005 Erasure will enter their 21st year together. To what does Clarke ascribe their longevity?
"We've managed to keep it together 'cause we're really good friends and that's the bottom line. We've got a very good record company: [Mute boss] Daniel Miller is a fan of the bands that he signs - at most labels, that's probably true for two years, tops. And we're realists as well. We don't expect to compete with 19 year olds in the charts in the UK."
"And, with Andy, it's great to work with someone who's forever looking on the positive side. I tend to be a bit more on the cynical side... That's the way our partnership works."
Erasure have come so far and done so much that it's easy to overlook their achievements. A random selection might include their second album, 1987's The Circus, which spawned not just the classic singles 'Victim Of Love' and 'Sometimes' but live/remix album The Two-Ring Circus, an early example of the vitality of the burgeoning dance scene.
Barely five months later they released The Innocents, the first of a run of five Number One albums, and launchpad for one of the great modern ballads, 'Ship Of Fools', and two classic pop anthems, 'A Little Respect' and 'Chains Of Love'. The former gave US "teenage dirtbags" Wheatus a huge hit in 2001, while the latter first cemented Erasure into American hearts and charts, where they still enjoy a rabid following. As the LA Weekly wrote in 2003, round the time of Erasure's Hits! compilation, "Andy Bell is the sweetest-sounding cherub in all of dance pop. Not since Bronski Beat's Jimmy Somerville has there been a melody maker whose swooning can send you into dreamland like a lullaby at your mother's bosom."
Then there's 1991's Chorus, an album recorded in Hamburg and on which Clarke deployed the vintage synthesizer sounds that would later become the touchstone for many an edgy techno and electroclash tune. By the by, it included seminal disco-rave floorfiller 'Love To Hate You', which Bell also sang in Italian and Spanish, in homage to the international versions of their hits that ABBA had recorded.
Speaking of whom, it was Erasure's artfully done ABBA-esque EP that gave the duo their first Number One. Although arguably, that honour should have gone to 1988's Christmas offering, the Crackers International EP: its lead song, the exuberant and sexy 'Stop!', was all over the radio like an over-enthusiastic office party-goer. But it stalled at Number Two, stuck behind the immovable force that is a Yuletide Cliff Richard song.
Bringing things bang up-to-date, in 2003 their innovative covers album spawned two further Top 20 hits (versions of Peter Gabriel's 'Solsbury Hill' and 'Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)' by Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel). Late last year, the re-release of Hi-NRG stomper 'Oh L'Amour', originally found on their still-sparkling 1986 debut Wonderland but remixed for Hits! The Very Best Of Erasure, gave Bell and Clarke their 29th consecutive UK Top 40 hit.
All in all, they've squeezed in a lot since 21-year-old Bell gave up the day job as a butcher and passed muster at his audition for Depeche Mode and Yazoo alumnus Clarke (he was only the 41st singer Clarke had seen). Come a long way, but still a ways to go.
It is, then, a revitalised and reborn Erasure who have produced the triumph that is Nightbird. And there are some pertinent personal factors here.
First up, it is Vince Clarke's romantic relationship that has taken him to Brooklyn in New York. And he has new working methods, and new musical kit, to match his new life. "I've never really thought environment affected your songwriting," notes Clarke, "but now I do."
Inspired by his musical partner's chipper emotional state, Andy Bell has crafted a set of lyrics that uplift and celebrate. What other message could be conveyed by a title like 'Let's Take One More Rocket To The Moon', even if you hadn't heard the sublime pop melody that goes with it?
Secondly, Andy Bell is feeling a whole lot better thanks. Not that you'd have guessed it from his typically gung-ho performances on Erasure's last series of shows (May 2003's The Other Tour), but Bell was in excruciating pain, and had been for two years beforehand.
He'd been having problems with his legs. Countless x-rays and specialists had failed to locate the source of the problem. He got through the tour on a mixture of physiotherapy, adrenalin and painkillers. Off-stage, his gait had been reduced to a hobble. "My stride had got smaller, my balance was thrown off, and I was walking around like a little monkey," he says with a grim laugh. "I was in agony - you don't realise how much pain you can withstand."
Finally, a diagnosis: the drugs he'd taken to combat a bout of pneumonia had dried up the blood in his thighbones. Drastic intervention was required. Earlier this year he had his right hip replaced; in October this year he had the left one done. The recovery period is long, intense and difficult after such major surgery. But even finally knowing what the problem was a relief. A liberated Bell could at last concentrate on his music again.
Andy Bell's favourite song on Nightbird is 'I Broke It All In Two'. It's a dreamy, late night mid-tempo lament which sounds like a cross between Pet Shop Boys and 'Only You' by Yazoo. Not that Bell is thinking of either of those references. "It's the most Elvis sounding," he beams. "I just think it sounds really filmic. I want that to be the opening song of the live show."
Ah, the Erasure touring phenomenon. Bell and Clarke are long renowned for their live shows. In autumn 2004 they release a typically phantasmagorical concert DVD, The Tank, The Swan And The Balloon Live!, a record of their huge theatrical tour of 1992 that wowed crowds across Europe and America. After you've done ABBA tributes, live bingo, mechanical birds, flying dancers, country and western spoofs and more costume changes than Cher getting ready for a big night out, where next? What does Bell, architect of the band's live extravaganzas, have in mind for the Nightbird tour?
"It'll be icy and bloody," Bell nods conspiratorially.
And?
"That's all I'm saying!"
"Icy and bloody?" repeats Clarke, deploying his best poker/synth wizard face. "Wow. Can't wait."