Erasure - The Neon 4/5
This is the 18th, yes, 18th album for electropop duo Erasure. A lot of people are touting this as the big comeback album, which is rather odd seeing as their last album ‘World Be Gone’ was only three years ago and garnered rather good reviews, I suppose people just love the drama of a comeback.
In all fairness Vince and Andy have stated that on this album they’ve gone back to some of their old synths to give the album a retro-Erasure feel and that’s true to a degree. It definitely has the feel of an early Erasure record but it doesn’t have the same level of pop songs that came so easily to them through the eighties and nineties.
Not to say that the songwriting is below par but there’s not anything on the album that touches ‘A Little Respect’ or ‘Sometimes’ but not many songs can come that close to such pop perfection so we should be a bit gentler in our approach.
Highlights are still very good indeed, lead single ‘Hey Now (Think I Got A Feeling) is a straight up classic blast of pop with a soaring Andy Bell vocal proving he’s still very much got it. ‘No Point in Tripping’ goes so far back in it's sounds that were it not for Mr. Bell’s vocals you could be mistaken that it's something from a Yazoo album.
‘The Neon’ feels very tight and sure of foot, everything you want from an Erasure album is here, even the downbeat sounding one, in this case ‘Tower of Love’, and while over familiarity can be the kiss of death for other albums this feel more like a bit of a rebirth and it sounds like a lot of fun.
Like it or not Erasure are one of Britain’s most consistent and entertaining bands (if you’ve never seen them live then rectify this at the first available opportunity!) and ‘The Neon’ is a band nourishing themselves from bits of the past whilst rearranging the familiar into something new and as music comes around in a circle once more Erasure sound completely relevant to today’s music scene. Again
.