Erasure

As I've added a bunch of stuff to my playlist queue on Pulsar, my Android mp3 player app, I've gone through most of what I have of Erasure. I was unpleasantly surprised to see that some tracks that I have were not on my phone. I didn't realize that, of course, until I was out of town listening to it on the road trip. I'm almost done with the list of Erasure songs... sorta. Certainly now that I'm home and will be listening only on half of my commute, mostly, it could take the rest of the week to get through all the tracks, but shouldn't take any longer than that. 

As I pulled up to the office parking lot this morning, I was about halfway through "Take a Chance on Me" from their "Abba-esque" EP from the early 90s. My mp3s of these were stripped of their album listing, so they, along with much of the more "modern" Erasure tracks are not sorted by album, but rather part of a large big mass of songs that are just playing in order of file name under the album heading of <no album>. I'm almost done with that large bag of tracks, and I do have one more Abba cover in the form of "Voulez-vous". 

Now, I can unironically like Abba (or ABBA, if that's how you're supposed to type it.) They are, admittedly, somewhat cheesy at times, and the late stage disco era of pop that they represent isn't my type of music really. That said, ABBA were incredibly talented song-writers, and while their style may not be my favorite, that doesn't actually diminish how great I think that there songs actually are. In fact, if anything, it focuses on it; I can't snooze through the songs just based on the style being my style; the songs have to be great or I wouldn't have any interest in them. In any case, ABBA hardly needs me to defend them; they're widely highly regarded, and are one of the most commercially successful pop bands of all time. Their influence is undeniable too. I'm an Abba fan, and I don't mind saying so. I'm also an Erasure fan, and I don't mind saying so, although in Erasure's case, it was easier because they do make music that's my style. But this means that I can coast and snooze through the songs; even mediocre ones will sound OK to me, because I do like the style of music. Mostly. When it isn't too flaming gay, which sadly, it occasionally is. Which is why it's a little bit sad to report—admittedly many years or even decades after it matters, I think, that "Abba-esque" is frankly kind of boring, and Erasure didn't do anything to what are generally pretty great tracks to make them interesting. I remember thinking that in the 90s, of course, after I picked it up. "Abba-esque" is the second EP Erasure released (if you don't count the odd "Am I Right?" remix EP/single) after the excellent "Crackers International" in 1988, and it follows fairly closely on the heels of the excellent Chorus album. It's a little weird, honestly, that it feels so hollow. Erasure were a great band, at the peak of their "power" if you will in 1992, and they were covering great songs by one of the greatest pop acts of all time. And yet, the thing just has no energy. 

Maybe I'm wrong. Abba-esque seems to have been popular enough, at least in Britain, and it's reasonably well reviewed by the music press. But I always thought it was oddly disappointing. I mean, heck—Information Society did a much better cover of "Lay All Your Love On Me" just a few years earlier in 1988, and in general, Information Society was not Erasure's equal... although they have a few fun tracks too, and in the mid-90s, at least, they put on a decent live show. And the same year Abba-esque came out, they were putting out Peace and Love, Inc. which sadly was not well-promoted by the label, and which was probably too late to really benefit from the electronic music heyday by that time. Eh, we'll catch them some other time.

I can also say that as much as there are some decent tracks here and there in the post-eponymous album era, that whole group kind of blends together in a vaguely acceptable sludge. Chorus was the last truly great album by Erasure, in my estimation, and they only had occasional moments of brilliance on some tracks here and there in the post-1991 phase. I  should probably queue up the full albums on YouTube or Spotify and give them a fairer chance than I have so far, but I don't anticipate changing my mind on that. 

They're not the only one of my favorite 80s bands that kind of petered out in the early 90s, though. Depeche Mode still had a great album in form of 1990's Violator, but I was disappointed in its direction, and I haven't liked anything that they've done since even as much as I liked even Violator. Playing the Angel and Memento Mori are reasonably bright spots in their subsequent repertoire, but they aren't as good as they were in the 80s. The Pet Show Boys had a few great tracks on Behavior (1990) and Very (1993) was actually quite good, but I kind of lost interest in them too.

Part of that was, no doubt, me and the musical landscape in general. I was no longer a teenager, I was a young married man by 1994, and young father by 1996, and grad student by 1998, and a young professional in a professional career by 2000. I had a lot on my mind other than pop music, and my concerns and what I thought was interesting or insightful had no doubt changed. And the rise of the Seattle Sound, grunge movement, and the general pop culture rejection of the late 80s sound was both very disappointing to me, but probably also had other subconscious impact on what I was listening to. I think the "big names" of the later 80s felt tired to me by then, not edgy and slick like they did in the 80s. This is especially true for Depeche Mode, who rejected the slick electronic sound to become a weird bluesy and noisy 90s band, but I lost interest in all of them, and got more involved in more indie-bands that were treading the same territory, like De/Vision, Mesh, Cosmicity, B! Machine and many others. I think that that indie aesthetic made them more appealing to me than the guys who'd already made it big and were now retreading, or abandoning, neither of which I liked, the sound that I had originally loved them for. 

Some of these bands later did stuff that I really liked. Like I said, Depeche Mode's Playing the Angel and more recently Memento Mori were pretty decent. Not as good as Black Celebration or Music for the Masses or even Violator, but maybe as good as Songs of Faith And Devotion or Ultra. Camouflage's 2003 album Sensor was probably actually their very best, much better even than their brilliant freshman release Voices & Images. Real Life sounded very 90s in Happy, but did a great cover album in 2009, which included a re-recorded "Send Me An Angel" which is also really good (although still not quite as good as the 1989 version.) Red Flag had some good 90s and 00s releases, but their initial offering is still their best. There's something about the dark reverb of the extended mix of "If I Ever" that I just really love, and although mislabeled on my 1989 CD version, it was still present that far back.

What can I say? For whatever reason, when the 80s ended, the 80s music ended too. What remained may have been "80s-like" in some ways, even in my own personal esteem, but it wasn't really truly the exact same thing. Erasure were, sadly, one of the casualties. I still like their early stuff; the same stuff that I liked as a teenager many decades ago, honestly, but otherwise I don't really care anymore.