How does it compare to the artist's other releases
Outstanding
Value for Money
Advantages:
Autumnal electropop for rainy afternoons
Disadvantages:
Only lasts for one pot of tea !
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
Autumn is a great time for colour, reflection, soul searching and listening to old albums.
I have been combining all the above while watching the rain trickle down my back window enjoying the heat from the radiator and drinking endless cups of hot sweet tea!
While engaged in said activities I found myself listening to this Erasure album for the first time in a decade, thinking it deserves new appraisal, in these post electroclash times.
With even my fellow Staffordshire-bred songsmith Robbie Williams trying to sound more like Gary Numan than Gary Barlow these days, Chorus is as relavent as ever.
Its 1991 release coincided with a great time in my life and therefore became a soundtrack to that; living in halls of residence at university and then moving to Holland for a year.
It was six years into Vince Clarke and Andy Bell’s Erasure, a long time for Vince, who had a history of setting up and then leaving bands at the height of their success (ie Depeche Mode, Yazoo, The Assembly) and after the missed response to the previous album Wild! really needed something special. It delivered.
It is often a bad sign when an album is named after the first single so when Chorus, an eco-friendly hit, was released I feared it might be the only highlight of an album of fillers.
The second single Love To Hate You, a stomping update of I Will Survive shook up that notion and took the autumn radio playlists and chart-compilers by storm.
The rest of the album is laid back, a sign of more ambient work in later years, as if they needed to get a dance floor filler out, before the downers kicked in, but no less potent.
I think timing was crucial to the success of the album, it is such a great autumnal feast. There are so many songs to listen to while staring out a rainy window drinking tea and being warmed by radiators, its unbelievable.
As a student in baggy Manchester there were a lot of rainy days to put this to practice!
Why Chorus stood the test of time compared to icontemporaries is it still sounds so fresh.
Martyn Philips’ low-fi techno production is sparse and economical, with thudding electobeats and strings used to effect rather than engulf.
The subject matter is classic Erasure, love turning to anger and frustration and back again, Amsterdam streets, sirens singing and romantic quasi-religious imagery.
People seem to reject Erasure as 80s throw-backs, although they had most of their biggest hits in the 90s (including five number one albums) and have since become more of a cult band, although they still manage to dent the upper reaches of the charts, the last of their 31 hits hitting the top 20 only last year.
They continue to note firsts. They covered an E.P of ABBA songs (Abba-esque, which reached number one in the UK in 1992), before Abba were trendy again.
They produced a dodgy album of lazy covers, followed by Paul Weller, Beautiful South and the like.
They also decided to use traditional instruments again on their Loveboat album, followed by fellow electropopsters the Pet Shop Boys….
But for me this was the last Erasure CD in the period you could rely on them to bring home the goods consistently every time.
They seem to have released a couple of good, albums, a bad one, followed by a brilliant one, followed by another iffy one, etc etc since. I suppose they don’t need sales anymore.
With a new album out next year preceded by a single Breathe, in January 2005, the 20th anniversary of the band, it will be very interesting to see the new direction.
Until then there will be a lot of rain, warmth and hot tea between now and the New Year!
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