Erasure: "Chorus"

12 June 1991

"More power to your perv-tights, "missus"!! (P.S. And it made the household cat jump out of the first floor window, nearly, and you can't say fairer than that.)"

— Sylvia Patterson

Gracing the cover of this fortnight's issue of Smash Hits is The Twins, an Australian sister act of Gayle and Gillian Blakeney. The not-entirely-ugly pair had been on the popular soap Neighbours which led to them getting signed up for a music career in the UK. While the likes of Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan (see below), Stefan Dennis and Craig MacLachlan had all enjoyed some degree of chart success, Gayle and Gillian flopped. They flopped hard in fact. In a steady decline for nearly a year-and-a-half, the songwriting/production team of Stock Aitken Waterman had been hemorraging acts and Kylie was really their last vestige. Figuring they needed to roll the dice, SAW handed the single "All Mixed Up" to The Twins. Unfortunately, the combination an uninspired composition, a Euro-pop sound the once-powerful trio struggled with and some ghastly singing torpedoed its chances.

With The Twins getting an undeserved Hits cover, Erasure were once again denied the chance to finally grace the front of the magazine themselves. In the five years since "Sometimes" broke them in the UK, the likes of Nick Kamen, Nick Berry, Pepsi & Shirlie, Philip Schofield (three times!), Sinitta, Halo James, Candy Flip (twice) and Gazza all graced the front of the top pop mag. Between them, these seven acts had nineteen Top 40 hits; Erasure had have thirty-five. (The duo would remain a top pop act for the next three years but coming changes at ver Hits meant that Christian Slater and the cast of Beverly Hills, 90210 would become preferred cover stars at the expense of actual pop groups)

I've written before that Erasure were the last major synth-pop group but this depends on how one would go about defining the term 'major'. They had seventeen Top Ten hits and five of their albums went to number one in the UK so they were hardly a minor act. Yet, they had trouble avoiding the 'also-ran' tag. Pet Shop Boys, their closest competitors, were bigger around the world and they seemed to matter to people more. Label mates Depeche Mode weren't hit makers on nearly the same level but they, too, outstripped them internationally and they had indie cred. So did New Order, whose legacy was already immense. All three synth acts had also been seminal at some point, as were The Human League, OMD and Soft Cell. But Erasure? They just never seemed as important as their synth-pop brethren.

There was also the problem of consistency — specifically, their lack of it. Though mostly a singles band (it's still hard to believe they had so many chart topping albums considering what a mixed bag their LP's are), their 45's didn't always hit the mark. On 1989's very patchy Wild!, for example, there's one absolute belter ("Blue Savannah"), another one that's quite good ("Drama") and two more that just go through the motions ("You Surround Me", "Star"). '88's mighty The Innocents produced two bangers ("Ship of Fools", "A Little Respect") and another that was just all right ("Chains of Love").

Returning swiftly in '91, Andy Bell and Vince Clarke were back (BACK!!) with some of their strongest material to date. The four singles were all top notch and the Chorus album would prove to be one of their better long players. (Ver Hits' Johnny Dee was less impressed, arguing that much of it sounded like "frightening techno muzak they play in McDonald's to make you eat your cheeseburgers quicker") Overall, it's probably a notch below both The Innocents and their self-titled 1996 release (ie the first one in ages not to got to number one) but it's still a quietly brilliant work. But even Erasure's best albums weren't especially essential affairs: you could always enjoy the hits if you couldn't be bothered with the LP.

First up was the title track and it's as great as anything they've ever done. The song's first half is seemingly as repetitive as "Stop!" until the bridge kicks in ("Holy Moses, our hearts are screaming...") which then gives way to another bridge ("The sunlight rising over the horizon..."). If the standard verse-chorus was thrilling enough (and it is), its these sections that put it over the top. And then there's Clarke putting away his acoustic guitar. I don't know, sometimes that strumming can be just the thing an Erasure song needs it's not what we were there for. "Chorus" opens some computerized notes and electronics are what the listener is treated to throughout — and it paid off. At last they had a single that was as good as "Don't You Want Me", "Tainted Love" and "West End Girls". (Sadly they were unable to repeat the chart topping success of those singles; the public, as ever, was much more willing to take a punt on drippy love songs)

Sylvia Patterson suggests that "Chorus" might have something to do with the environment. Its chorus does go on about covering up the sun, birds flying away and the fish going "to sleep" so she may be on to something but who's to say? Bell has always liked spouting indecipherable philosophical lyrics; the more difficult to pull apart the better, in fact. It could be all about their ecological concerns or about some of Bell's patented overwrought heartbreak or it could be just yet more or his nonsense set to a blistering techno-pop tune. Whether meaningful or meaningless, Bell had the voice to pull it off

Erasure always seemed like a group that everyone 'quite liked' but was nobody's favourite. While they may not have inspired the devotion that fans had for Depeche Mode, New Order and Pet Shop Boys, they managed to avoid the backlash that the others occasionally faced or were visible enough that they weren't easily forgotten about. They somehow toed the line between prominence and obscurity into over a decade of hit singles and best selling albums. They weren't as big or as important or as seminal as their contemporaries but they continued to be Erasure, a band who were sometimes great, typically reliable and seldom boring. What more could they have done?

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Jason Donovan: "Any Dream Will Do"

Some broke away from the Stock Aitken Waterman hit factory in order to assert their creative independence; Jason Donovan wasn't one of them. No one leaves one restrictive media empire for an even bigger restrictive media empire thinking that their artistic vision had any kind of hope. Then again, Jase never gave anyone the impression he had an artistic vision to begin with. You would at least expect the jump from SAW to Andrew Lloyd Weber's inner circle would've resulted in better "sounding" records but "Any Dream Will Do" is as cheap as they come. As Patterson says, it's distressingly superior to the detritus Pete Waterman had been flinging his way (possibly his best single since "When You Come Back to Me") but this wasn't saying much. Though it would spent a fortnight at number one, it would quickly become overshadowed by the single which would usurp it. It's one you might know.

Erasure: Crackers International

30 November 1988

"They seem to be getting better and better, and this is no exception to the rule."

— Alex Kadis

Side 1: "Lady Madonna"; "Across the Universe"

Side 2: "The Inner Light"; "Hey Bulldog"

This is the track listing of what should have been the greatest EP of all time. The Beatles were getting ready for their meditation retreat in northern India but they were contractually obligated to release a single while they were away. George Harrison had already been in the subcontinent working on the soundtrack to the film Wonderwall and he produced a session with Indian musicians for his composition "The Inner Light". He took it back with him to London where he laid down his vocals at the encouragement of John Lennon and Paul McCartney who both liked the guitarist's latest work. As if spurred on by Harrison, his bandmates contributed some nice material as well. McCartney delivered "Lady Madonna" which would soon give the Fab Four yet another number one single while Lennon offered up both "Across the Universe" and "Hey Bulldog". Macca and Harrison's tracks would be used for their next single while Lennon's were held over for a charity album and the Yellow Submarine soundtrack respectively. None of the four are top flight songs but they're all very good and they would have become more than the sum of their parts had they been bundled together.

EPs exist in the grey area between singles and albums. If kept to three or four tracks (or even two in the case of Bjorn Again's Erasure-ish) they may qualify for the Top 40; if they go over their allotment, they become more like an album, especially if their running length goes past the twenty minute mark. (Even then, the lines aren't clear: I know of at least one R.E.M. fan who recognises Chronic Town, with just a quartet of tracks, to be an album; this blog will be looking at an extreme and oddball example next month) Effectively taking the place of the 10" record, EPs became a compromise between the brevity of the 7" single and the sheer length of the album. The Beatles dominated the EP charts every bit as much as they did the more renowned formats. Young people who couldn't afford to buy With The Beatles at least had the opportunity to invest in All My Loving which siphoned off four of its choice deep cuts. During their commercial peak they only issued one EP of original material and it was the mixed bag Long Tall Sally, which includes "Slow Down" and "Matchbox", probably the two worst covers they ever did. The EP chart died away towards the end of 1967 by which point The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour double EP was ready and was suddenly eligible for the singles chart (it got to no. 2 behind their own "Hello Goodbye").

Side 1: "Stop!"; "The Hardest Part"

Side 2: "Knocking on Your Door"; "She Won't Be Home"

EPs would eventually become a favourite format of punk groups and indie acts as a way of covering more ground than with a simple 7". Three or four tracks to choose from meant that there would be a better chance that someone's interest would be peaked by at least one of them and they were almost as cheap to make. The brilliant Spiral Scratch by Buzzcocks helped spur the revival of the EP and it wouldn't be long before rival punk and post-punk acts all over Britain were releasing their own.

A pop band signed to indie label Mute (where Vince Clark had remained since his days with both Depeche Mode and Yazoo), Erasure had a streak of the anti-commercial band about them and one who still retained a deep connection with their fans. 1988 had been a big year for them with a number one album The Innocents and three hit singles and they would soon win that year's Best Group award at the Brits. No one would've faulted them for choosing to release a fourth (especially considering Michael Jackson had just put out "Smooth Criminal", his seventh single from Bad — and he wasn't even done there!) but they admirably decided to try their luck with an EP of all new material. It's a wonder they didn't slap a giant 'OUR XMAS GIFT TO YOU!' sticker on the sleeve.

Unusually, Smash Hits had the lyrics for both "Stop!" and "Knocking on Your Door" printed in the same issue, as if thinking that both songs would be in competition with each other from both radio and TV. Didn't happen. My sister bought Crackers International (notably before we had anything to play it on, though it wouldn't be long before she acquired a record player from a friend) which would be my first chance to see a 7" record that looked like an LP. Each side had markings for the separate tracks! I only knew "Stop!" but there seemed to be so much more! While Crackers International was printed on the sleeve, effectively "Stop!" became the single and there didn't seem to be much point in the rest. (A similar scenario would unfold in the early part of 1989 when Simple Minds went to number one with their quasi-EP Ballad of the Streets though everyone knew it as "Belfast Child") While Erasure's loyal fanbase would have jumped for joy at an EP's worth of all new songs, the average listener only seemed to care about the one they kept hearing everywhere. (Pub jukeboxes, a recent obsession of mine, carried special editions that only featured "Stop" and what was its de facto b-side "Knocking on Your Door")

"Stop!" hogged the airplay and it subsequently appeared on various artist compliation and Erasure's handful of greatest hits compilations over the years. With a hard-hitting hi-NRG beat, Andy Bell's vocal histrionics and some nicely placed seasonal bells, it's easy to see why. Yet, listened to in the context of one of their best of's gives away that that it's repetitive and flimsy. The lyrics to "Ship of Fools" may have been nonsense but it remains a compelling song nonetheless. "A Little Respect" told the tale of being looked down upon in a relationship: well-trodden subject matter in song but one that Bell and Clark managed to keep fresh. But "Stop!" has a verse and a chorus and the two go back-and-forth from there — and their patented philosophical insights are nowhere to be found. It's just under three minutes long yet it somehow overstays its welcome.

It was only after a friend of my sister's let us have her portable record player for the remainder of our time in England that I got to hear "The Hardest Part", "Knocking on Your Door" and "She Won't Be Home". "Stop!" was all right but I didn't like it as much "A Little Respect" and I was hoping for some hidden treasures. "The Hardest Part" was my first exposure to one of those reflective Andy Bell numbers that take a lot of time to get used to: though I've since come round, I hated "Breath of Life" when I first heard it and I've never managed to warm to either "You Surround Me" or "Always" and it falls into this trajectory. (Bell frequently aspires to profundity but only sometimes pulls it off) I convinced myself that "Knocking on Your Door" was the true single but it lacks the immediacy of their classic singles so I guess there's a reason no one bothered with it. "She Won't Be Home" was a belated attempt to make it more of a Christmas project but I can't help but feel that there's a reason it's hiding away there on the second side's last track. Even so, the four tracks do hang rather well together in much the same way that the Lady Madonna EP does: it just isn't anywhere near as good.

Nevertheless, Crackers International felt like a monumental single that December. The Christmas Number One race was about to come down to Bros, Kylie & Jason and Cliff Richard and Erasure represented the alternative to all that yuletide schlock. Pet Shop Boys had already had their moment of stealing the Xmas thunder a year previously and now it was Bell and Clark's turn. They stood for all those quality records that were all destined to come up short: Neneh Cherry's "Buffalo Stance", Inner City's "Good Life", New Order's "Fine Time". One of those may have been your favourite but why not get behind the one hope of a decent Christmas Number One that's not going to make the pop kids with good taste in music hurl? These aren't any of the best tracks Erasure has ever done but they're all new and there are four of them! Four! Sometimes quantity manages to trump quality.

Crackers International became a huge hit, falling just short of the top spot in the early part of 1989. The cover art and the last track that no one listened to aside, there wasn't much of a connection with Christmas so it continued to sell strongly past the New Year. Ultimately, it signaled where they'd be heading with their next album Wild!, a much more serious and somber collection of songs that what was on The Innocents (even though you'd think it would have been the other way around given their titles). Singles like "Drama" and "Blue Savannah" did well but the duo strove a bit too hard to create a masterpiece and ended up with something uncharacteristically boring instead. Luckily, their grasp of great pop would quickly return in 1991, which they would in turn follow-up with another EP which would be even more mediocre than Crackers but one that managed to be widely popular and strangely influential.

Side 1: "A Century of Fakers"; "Le pastie de la bourgeoisie"

Side 2: "Beautiful"; "Put the Book Back on the Shelf/Songs for Children"

Okay, 3.. 6.. 9 Seconds of Light didn't have sides because it's from the heyday of the CD era (though I wouldn't be at all surprised to see it reissued on "vinyl" for Record Store Day or some other attempt at pathetically trying to prop up the music industry) but it follows along the same lines as Lady Madonna and Crackers International. Only (a) it's real and (b) it's truly outstanding. Groups like Belle & Sebastian gave a new life to the EP because they made the format a priority. They didn't cynically plop a single in disguise on their extended plays, nor did they time their releases strategically for Christmas. They selected tunes that were of the highest caliber, not leftovers from their most recent album. The tracks are diverse and wonderful. The Beatles never contemplated such a work and Erasure didn't have it in them so good on Belle & Sebastian for offering up the greatest EP of all time.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

U2: "Angel of Harlem"

Alex Kadis isn't terribly impressed with ver 2's second single from Rattle & Hum, feeling that they're trying to sound far too American. This is a valid complaint of their stuff in general from this time but I'm not sure "Angel of Harlem" is especially guilty of over-cultural appropriation. In fact, one of its chief virtues is how it doesn't understand Americana. Meant as a tribute to legendary jazz vocalist Billie Holiday with references to Charlie Parker ("Birdland"), Miles Davis and John Coltrane (none of whom ever worked with Lady Day), we are not greeted to the sound of U2 doing old school swing or improvisation; instead, they decided to recreate sixties' soul because...black people? Problematic? Possibly but Bono, The Hedge and the other two get away with it because they're not in over their heads trying to re-do Stax records. As with much of Rattle & Hum, this is a tribute that says much more about them than the legends they supposedly revere but if they're doing something as wonderful as this, who am I to complain? As many have remarked, it's the closest thing to a Christmas song they ever did and it's surprising it didn't do better.

Pet Shop Boys: "Heart"

23 March 1988

"Unfortunately though, it's the best of a very bad bunch."

— Andy Bell

"I'd rather not pick one for best single — they're all terrible."

— Vince Clarke

So, what was it I was saying about Erasure being a pair of old grumps?

They were a pop group but one that seemed loath to play the pop game. Vince Clarke had already experienced that side of it and perhaps that explains their surprising lack of visibility in the pop mags of the time. Unbelievably, the pair never appeared on the cover of Smash Hits, despite racking up eighteen top ten hits, just three shy of the Pet Shop Boys. The music press reviewed their albums, singles and concerts but never went out of their way to celebrate them. They were a pop group that retained a mystery about them but as a consequence they became everyone's third or fourth or fifth favourite group but not the sort of act that thrilled the kids to pieces. Still, they got snagged for the task reviewing the singles for an issue of ver Hits at the end of March, 1988. Even so, they didn't do their standoffish image any favours by ripping into every single up for consideration. These people may have made pop music but they sure didn't seem to like it.

Their chosen Single of the Fortnight was from a familiar group that fans were passionate about. They were the favourite or second favourite group of a lot of young people in the late eighties. A group that did play the pop game. A group that had already appeared on the cover of Smash Hits on five occasions (including this very issue), with several more to come. Like Erasure, they were a duo with a curiously charismatic frontman and a stern keyboardist. Both groups played synth-pop but the similarities end there. While not exactly a world apart, Pet Shop Boys and Erasure couldn't have been more different. (There was sometimes a bit of a thorny relationship between Pet Shop Boys and Erasure, like a low-key version of the The Cure-Smiths rivalry. Bell once expressed dismay at the favourable treatment Tennant and Lowe tended to get from the press while Tennant didn't seem to respect Bell and Clarke too much. It was never discussed at length on either side and I don't think fans felt the need to back one side at the expense of the other. If there happened to be any ill will by this point, it happily isn't brought up by Erasure here, which is more than can be said for other pop stars who used critiquing the singles as a means to bash their rivals)

They say that following up a debut album is often tricky because an artist or group has a lifetime to draw upon to create that first work but only a few months to then come up with a second. Some, however, have a greater wealth of material to fall back on for a sophomore release. Noel Gallagher had accumulated enough songs over the course of his early-to-mid twenties to fill two LPs and so came the only good albums Oasis ever made, Definitely Maybe and (What's the Story) Morning Glory? Similarly, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe had been working together for five years before "West End Girls" gave them their first hit single and they had enough tracks to even see spill over to their third, fourth and fifth albums (early composition "It's Not a Crime" would eventually evolve into "Left to My Own Devices", "Jealousy" had been in limbo for nearly a decade before winding up on Behaviour and "To Speak Is a Sin" had been tried out early on only to be abandoned until 1993's Very). Nevertheless, most of the best songs were already earmarked for Please, leaving the swift follow up Actually as a bit more of a pick and mix collection. Tennant has said that it doesn't hang together as well as other albums of their's and it's easy to see why. It's sort of a less-than-the-sum-of-its-parts release with filler ("Hit Music", "I Want to Wake Up" and, yes, "Heart") alongside some of their strongest material with seemingly little thought given to track order — aside from "King's Cross" which had originally been slotted in as the album's opener before they wisely gave it a rethink and tacked it on to the end where it belonged.

Erasure's Andy Bell and Vince Clarke are in agreement with me, if much more avowedly so. I still really like Actually, I just don't think it's as strong as their other peak-period albums (on some days I'll even take later works like Fundamental and Electric over it too); for them, it's clearly a subpar effort following their impressive debut. And, certainly, Please is the better of the two. (Coincidentally or not, they would soon start approaching each album with a purpose. Introspective consisted of half-a-dozen stretched out 12" mixes of potential singles and Behaviour was meant to be a rootsy return utilizing analog synthesizers and being free — for the most part — of samples. They never did concept albums per se but the generic, whatever-is-available attempt at creating an LP would be a one time thing) Actually's first three singles — "It's a Sin", "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" and "Rent" — are superb but their options for a fourth were limited. That cheerful, irony-free love song on the second side would have to do.

Given that they made it their SOTF, you'd think Bell and Clarke would have plenty of praise for "Heart". The singer does make note of Tennant's deadpan vocals being a highlight (even if he undermines it soon after by knocking the "backing track with any old vocals slapped on top") but that's basically it. They don't knock the record as much as the others so there's that too. Otherwise, we've got a very unimpressive SOTF and, as Clarke states in the quotation above, it's a wonder why they even bothered.

I understand Erasure's take on "Heart" but I still can't get fully on board with them. Much as I kind of want to say otherwise, it's a plenty good enough pop song by any standard. That said, the standards of Tennant and Lowe were already high enough that "Heart" doesn't quite match up. The singer has admitted that it was a "one-off" for the group and they famously wanted to give it to Madonna before losing the nerve and deciding to record it themselves. Spruced up with a remix, the single version has a little more pop to it, a rare instance (along with "Suburbia") of a PSB single being superior to its album version. I would never consider it to be one of my favourites of their's and I don't think I'd miss it if it was somehow expunged from their catalog but try telling me that when I'm happily singing along with it. They didn't play it when I went to see them but I wouldn't have complained if they had,

Helped along by an outstanding video, "Heart" went to number one just as Bell predicted. While "West End Girls" was like nothing that had come before it and both "It's a Sin" and "Always on My Mind" were epic singles that couldn't not have topped the charts, the group's final number one is relatively characterless in comparison. But that's the thing with having an imperial period: even the so-so stuff manages to connect with people. This is something that happened to The Beatles with "I Feel Fine" and "Hello Goodbye", Blondie with "The Tide Is High", ABBA with "The Name of the Game" and "Super Trouper", Madonna with "Who's That Girl?": it's one thing to top the charts with a magnificent single but quite another to do so with something that's just sort of all right.

The end of an imperial period may coincide with a group's demise (see both ABBA and Blondie) but some are able to shrug off the sudden lack of guaranteed magahits in order to reach a creative peak. This would be where the Pet Shop Boys would be headed once this nice, inconsequential love song had been done and dusted. It won't be long before they're back (BACK!) on this blog. As for Erasure, they too will soon be back (BACK!) with something of a "Heart" of their own.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

a-ha: "Stay on These Roads"

While Erasure have little good to say about "Heart", they save their best jabs for other singles on offer this fortnight. Not unlike the Pet Shop Boys, Bell and Clarke used to like a lot of a-ha's stuff but they're super underwhelmed by their latest offering. I am happy to say that I strongly disagree. "Stay on These Roads" is one of a-ha's finest singles, a power ballad with some eerie Norse angst at its heart. Sure, Bell's correct that it's nigh on impossible to understand anything Morten Harket is singing about but that's nothing new. They're quick to dismiss the trio's move towards a more "serious and credible" side but this is hardly a nineties pop group going through a miserable R&B phase; "Stay on These Roads" is a hybrid: part stadium rock anthem (Clarke admits that he can imagine it being sung at a football match), part Blue Nile-esque sophisti-pop gem, part drippy love song for teens to awkwardly sway to at a high school dance. So very eighties, yet so very timeless. With all due respect to the Pet Shops, this is the rightful SOTF.

Erasure: "Ship of Fools"

9 March 1988

"Oh what a joy it is to hear a record that isn't taken over by twittering synthesizers, pumping bass lines and drum beats ten to the dozen, especially when it comes from Erasure who've built their reputation making infectious dance music from those very ingredients."

— Ro Newton

Between Blancmange, The Communards, Depeche Mode, The Human League, Pet Shop Boys, Propaganda, Sharpe & Numan, Sparks and Yazoo, this blog has covered many synth-heavy bands (with The Associates, Eurythmics and It's Immaterial being not so far off from this realm either). It hardly needs stating that synthesizers were everywhere throughout the eighties though a subtle backlash would begin as the decade began to wane. This would never result in a full-scale destruction of the sub-genre but synth-pop's glory days were just about at an end. 1990 and '91 would mark its final high point with the outstanding albums Violator, Behaviour, Electronic, Chorus and Sugar Tax. I miss those days...

Erasure would be the last major synth act to emerge. Vince Clarke had been a founding member of Depeche Mode and had been their main songwriter, composing early hits "New Life" and "Just Can't Get Enough". There have been many reasons given for his sudden departure but if he did indeed chafe at the promotional obligations of pop it didn't stop him from quickly forming his first synth duo Yazoo with Alison Moyet. (The year I spent in the UK, we resided in Basildon, an English new town noted only for being one of the worst places in the country and the home of some pretty pop stars) He had been done with ver Mode after just one album but he managed to cut two LP's with this new unit. Again, Clarke proved his worth as a top songwriter, this time being behind hits "Only You" and "Don't Go", among others. He and Moyet went their separate ways and he dithered a bit, appearing on Blancmange side-project West India Company with their inter-faith seasonal mantra-pop "Ave Maria" and then forming The Assembly, a "group" that consisted of himself, associate Eric Radcliffe and a succession of lead singers.

With so many projects that started promisingly before fizzling out, it's remarkable that he finally found himself a partner worth sticking it out with. As opposed to Yazoo and The Assembly, Erasure struggled at first, their early singles falling way short of the hit parade. And this was by no means the public being a bunch of ignoramuses: singles like "Who Needs Love Like That" and "Heavenly Action" are nothing special, a far cry from the likes of "Just Can't Get Enough" and "Only You". A significant change that occurred at this point was that Clarke was co-writing with vocalist Andy Bell and the pair needed time to work things out. "Sometimes" was their breakthrough single and would be Clarke's biggest hit to date but it still isn't quite classic synth-pop. Were Erasure ever going to be anything more than the Pet Shop Boys without a sense of humour?

The group's seriousness is something I often cite that held them back but I've come to realise recently that it's a rather unfair judgement. With a voice like Bell's, how could Erasure pull off humour and wit? He has a gorgeous voice but one that always sounds so deeply committed to whatever it is he's singing about. (As if to compensate, they sometimes filmed lighthearted videos which never fooled me) If the Pet Shops did irony, then Erasure specialised in painful sincerity. Then again, more often than not I bought what they were selling (spiritually speaking anyway, I didn't actually purchase anything by them until the excellent compilation Pop! The First 20 Hits in 1992). Their singles got better and better so what did it matter if they were about as joyous as a bucket of old rags?

Increased quality control of Erasure's records meant that their chart fortunes grew along the way. Their second album The Circus is a marked improvement on debut Wonderland and both "Sometimes" and "Victim of Love" were pretty good singles. The album's title track was the fourth and final 45 released from it and it pointed the way forward for the group. A departure from their usual buoyant pop, it's a downbeat number that is more musically ambitious and can be slotted into the category of anti-Thatcher songs that the likes of Billy Bragg, The Style Council, The The and, yes, Pet Shop Boys were also churning out at around this time. With this one song, they were already proving themselves to be more capable of political pop than The Communards even if the record itself doesn't quite work. The tune is a bit repetitive and I'm not sure just what makes all this a circus but they were on to something. (It hardly needs saying that it fails in comparison with The Beatles' masterful "Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite" in terms of big top pop)

A year later and they were back (Back!) and they had picked up where they left off. "Ship of Fools" would an unconventional teaser single from their third album The Innocents, released a month later. "Chains of Love" and "A Little Respect" would have been more logical choices (even deep cuts like "Phantom Bride" and "Yahoo!" would have made more sense). As Chris Heath says in his review of the album, it's the only slow track on an LP packed with potential hits. But they boldly went with something similarly glum as "The Circus" — only much better. (Notably, it was the only one of their singles from The Innocents not to be a hit in the US)

On paper, however, it doesn't look like much. My sister and I spent a long train journey from London to Edinburgh at the start of the October midterm break looking at the latest issue of ver Hits, which included lyrics to all the tracks from the latest compilation Smash Hits Party 1988. We knew or knew of many of the groups but most of the songs had been and gone from the charts prior to our arrival in Britain that August. Thus, we attempted to work out how the songs would go based purely on looking at the lyrics. Two songs made us laugh because they both seemed so stupid. One was "The King of Rock 'n' Roll" by Prefab Sprout (much as I love Paddy McAloon, we weren't wrong on that one) and "Ship of Fools" was the other.

To this day, I still don't know who this "baby of the class" is supposed to be or why him not knowing "one and one was two" matters. I guess it's about losing a child in some sort of nasty fashion. Recalling The Smiths and their controversial closing track from their debut album ("Suffer Little Children"), it's natural to conclude that it's dealing with abduction and/or murder. Things get a bit cloudier with the line "why can't you see what you're doing to me": is he addressing the child because he can't suddenly be trying to communicate with the criminal. Something is missing but in a way that's what makes the song's sorrow so convincing. I was a very unreliable journal keeper as a teen (I don't even bother to try now) but when I did jot down my thoughts about heartbreak and angst, they were hardly coherent. The words are scattered and it's as if Bell is in the midst of processing his thoughts in song.

Meaningful or gibberish: either way, the lyrics work as presented. It helps that the tune that accompanies it is one of Clarke's finest. It is a huge step beyond "The Circus", subtler and more refined. Not drenched in synths, no, but they're still there in service to the song. Clarke's background as a techno-pop henchman meant that he had years of experience knowing what works for various vocalists came in handy. Bell's voice is lush enough so that the music and production is gentle and only a bit haunting.

Reviewer Ro Newton never seemed like your typical pop-kid-turned-Smash-Hits-writer. As I have previously written, she had been a host of the Whistle Test and you can detect a fondness for more guitar-based music in previous singles reviews. (That said, she also once gave a Single of the Fortnight to Michael Jackson and has praise in this singles review page for Debbie Gibson — see below — so she was no rockist either) She doesn't try to hide her derision for the "twittering synthesizers" and the rest and seems genuinely surprised by this new direction. It's possible that she hadn't been following Erasure closely or she may have noted Clarke's occasional use of an acoustic guitar on tracks like "Victim of Love" or that "The Circus" signalled a change in direction. Nevertheless, she's absolutely right about just how wonderful "Ship of Fools" is. They had done fine work before but this was their first great moment where everything fell perfectly into place.

Erasure's move towards more serious subject matter didn't always work and it's fortunate that they never gave up on ecstatic pop along the way. But for an earnest singer and a grumpy-looking keyboardist/guitarist, it makes sense that they would embrace a darker side. Sheer joy just wasn't their bag and we'll see very soon just what a moody pair they could be when it came to the task of evaluating other pop groups and their synth-friendly or synth-free singles. Stay tuned.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Debbie Gibson: "Only in My Dreams"

They called her a "Mall Madonna" (though you'd think this would have been a better moniker for Tiffany given her penchant for performing in mall food courts all over the States) but Debbie Gibson was a very talented young woman back in the day. Like her nibs, she doesn't have the strongest voice in the world but there's character in that nasally tone. Truthfully, she was probably a better songwriter than the Material Girl and it was this quality that likely made everyone think she'd be around for a while. Still, it was a good ride while it lasted and she made some money and some of the songs were quite good, especially at first. I always preferred "Out of the Blue" myself and "Foolish Beat" has aged surprisingly well but "Only in My Dreams" is decent too. Her future seemed bright but she got serious too fast and couldn't pull it off as well as Erasure.