Day 87: Erasure – The Innocents
Erasure is another band that’s been on my list for ages, but I’ve just never gotten around to listening to them very much. I tried to listen to them once in the car but just couldn’t get into it, so I thought I’d give them a proper bash today. I think legally I can’t call myself a synth pop fan unless I’ve listened to at least one Erasure record, so here goes nothing.
Album cover courtesy of Sire Records
Erasure were formed in London in 1985 by singer and songwriter Andy Bell and songwriter, keyboardist and producer Vince Clarke. Clarke was already famous as a founding member of Depeche Mode who wrote some of their hits, like “Just Can’t Get Enough”, after which he went on to form the synth-pop duo Yazoo with Alison Moyet.
Bell was a fan of Clarke, and he had even considered sending Clarke a letter to offer his services as a singer, when he saw an ad in Melody Maker advertising auditions. Bell got the job, but he was so nervous for the first six months that you could hear it on their first album, saying “I was very shy within the studio. I couldn’t even speak to him. I could not believe I was there.”
The Innocents was released in 1988 and is the pair’s third studio album. It went to number one on the UK charts very fast, and sold double-platinum shortly thereafter. It’s their most sold album to date and it also helped them break into the American market with some of its Motown influences.
I tried to do this album once before but I just wasn’t feeling it at the time, maybe it’s because it was playing on a car stereo so I just couldn’t hear it well enough. At the time, I thought it just sounded like pretty average pop music, nothing to write home about, I couldn’t even muster the interest to write about it. Listening to it now, I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s not average at all.
Obviously “A Little Respect” is the best-known song from the record, but it’s not the best one –“Ship of Fools” is so good that there’s almost an addictive quality to it. I like all of them, except the slightly out of place-sounding “65,000” which just sounds like they were auditioning to make songs for console games.
I’m trying to give less 8.5’s, but this one is definitely an 8.5/10. I like it, it’s good, not revelatory to me but good enough that I’ll definitely listen to it again. Also, strangely enough, much like with Spandau Ballet, there’s also a horny vampire connection, as Andy Bell did a few concept albums as an immortal polysexual being called Torsten. What is it with ‘80s pop stars and vampires? Not that I’m complaining. Maybe it’s because I just read Dracula, but I’m interested.