Erasure – The Violet Flame

Down in Flames

Most ’80s bands will remain forever suspended in that epoch, like flies caught in a nostalgic spider web. From time to time, one may catch a bit of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” or Nena’s “99 Luftballons” on the radio, or randomly hear a-ha’s “Take On Me”, playing in the grocery store, and for a moment or two, be thrust back into an uncertain past, that reeked of Aquanet. However, the aforementioned bands had nowhere near as large an impact on music during the mid to late ’80s as Erasure’s Vince Clarke and Andy Bell.

Vince Clarke was a founding member of fellow ’80s synth pop group, Depeche Mode, and penned the bands first three hits, including “Just Can’t Get Enough” before leaving to form the short lived project Yazoo with singer Alison Moyet. After Yazoo disbanded Clarke placed an ad in the popular British music weekly of the day, the now defunct Melody Maker, which is how he came to meet singer Andy Bell, and how Erasure was formed.

Since their debut album, 1986’s Wonderland, the pair have steadily released an album every two to four years, quite an accomplishment not only for an ’80s synth pop outfit, but also for any band in general. Over the years the prolific pair has penned twenty-four consecutive Top 40 hits in the UK, among them “A Little Respect,” “Chains of Love” and “Always.” So it’s not surprising they haven’t called it quits yet. Though on their latest release, The Violet Flame, it sounds as though the fire has gone out.

The opening track, “Dead of Night” recalls the type of song which MTV, in its heyday, would have played the video for during the actual dead of night, while trying to fill up airtime. The rhythm, which sounds a bit too remarkably like a rip-off of the last half of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” is set to a melodically monotonous synth loop, and gives the impression that while recording this track, Clarke simply pressed the space bar on his MacBook and went to get a cup of coffee, while Bell recorded his thoughtless lyrics.

The next track “Elevation” is melodic poppy perfection, streaming with bouncy bass beats and soaring synths that would be perfect for the club. The only problem is the club it would be perfect for closed twenty years ago.

Perhaps the biggest reason The Violet Flame doesn’t work is because each track comes off sounding like a repetitive rehashing of old material. Lyrically, Bell seems to be scraping the bottom of the barrel for material, noticeable especially on “Be the One” and “Sacred,” the album’s two sadly sincere sounding songs, in which the lyrics are interchangeably insincere. By the final track, “Stayed a Little Late Tonight,” Bell’s lyrics are ironically revealing, as he perhaps unknowingly prophesies the state of Erasure, as he sings, “I guess it must be something in my make-up/
I can be my own worst enemy”. Simply put, by the time The Violet Flame closes, the pair has beaten the proverbial dead horse to death so badly it’s unrecognizable.

Erasure is not alone in a world of artists who have “had it and lost it” and still refuse to understand that the game is over. Unfortunately there is no AA for this. Many ’80s acts realized the day their music died, and were wise enough to walk away before they became caricatures of themselves. Sadly, no one seems to have had the heart to tell Erasure.