Music
By Mikael Wood
As Erasure, singer Andy Bell and keyboard whiz Vince Clarke have spent the last two decades building one of the most rewarding songbooks in synth-pop. “Chains of Love,” “A Little Respect,” “Ship of Fools”: Anyone who’s attended an ’80s-themed dance party in his life has no doubt shaken his stuff to each one.
Playing May 6 at Ryman Auditorium
Photo: Sebastian Artz - Copyright: Mute Records
The great secret of Erasure’s music, though, has always been the potent melancholy swimming beneath Clarke’s undulating rhythms and Bell’s jubilant melodies—a pensive acknowledgment of the uncomfortable realities of life in the AIDS era. Finally, the secret’s out: On Union Street (Mute), the English duo give an acoustic makeunder to 11 gems from the Erasure catalog, laying bare what in the past required careful examination to appreciate. The result is an unlikely roots-music masterwork, one that connects back to the tear-in-your-beer tradition of old-school drama queens like Patsy Cline.
Recorded in Brooklyn in collaboration with Nashville guitarist Steve Walsh, Union Street has inspired Bell and Clarke to set out on Erasure’s first tour with a live band; it kicks off at the Ryman Auditorium Saturday night. Last week we tracked down Clarke in Germany and asked him about it.
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SCENE: How did the original idea for Union Street hatch?
VINCE CLARKE: I’ve been thinking about it for ages. A couple of years ago we started working with Steve; he did a couple of radio-station shows with us. I discussed the idea with him, and because he’s a session guy, he knew these various players in Nashville. So he kind of organized the whole thing. Then it was just a case of choosing the songs that we felt would work best with an acoustic setup.
SCENE: Was that an extended process?
CLARKE: It didn’t take long, really. The whole project, I think, probably took four or five weeks to record and mix. It wasn’t that difficult to choose the songs because the tunes that we tended to go for were the ones that we felt had perhaps been missed by radio because they weren’t singles. We went for the songs that I felt had the strongest melodies and the strongest lyrics—songs that could stand up to just being accompanied by an acoustic guitar.
SCENE: The recording process must have been quite different from the typical Erasure process.
CLARKE: Oh, yeah, completely different. I mean, we’ve never really worked with musicians and band members before; 99.9 percent of the time, it’s just been me and the computer and Andy. So working with other guys—getting their input on the tracks and their interpretations of the various melody lines—was really interesting for me. I sort of took an executive-producer role on the whole project, and thoroughly enjoyed just listening to these guys play.
SCENE: You were funneling your vision through these other musicians. Were you directing them in the studio?
CLARKE: A little bit. But because we knew that the songs were strong already, I wasn’t thinking in terms of, “That needs a special sound to make the song work.” These were songs that we’ve lived with for years; we knew that the melodies and the lyrics were strong already. We pretty much let the guys do their thing.
SCENE: Is there country music in your background?
CLARKE: I don’t really know much about country music and the whole Nashville scene. But Steve, he’s living there now, so he’s been kind of filling us in on how it all works there.
SCENE: That’s surprising to hear. The stuff on Union Street sounds very natural with the rootsy arrangements.
CLARKE: I think the reason that these songs work like that is because when we write together, it’s always done on acoustic instruments anyway. It’s invariably written on guitar or piano. That’s how the songs get demoed, so it wasn’t that weird bringing them back to that base level.
SCENE: The arrangements reveal a different side of the songs.
CLARKE: I think that’s true. I think what’s interesting, actually, is that when these songs were written, the lyrics meant one thing. And now that we’ve lived a little longer and been through some of these experiences that we sing about, they become more real.
SCENE: What’s a good example of that on the record?
CLARKE: “Piano Song,” because some of both mine and Andy’s families have passed away. That’s one very poignant example.
SCENE: What can we expect at the Ryman? Are you sticking solely to stuff on the album?
CLARKE: We’re playing basically the new record. Then we’ve taken the hits and we’ve given them a kind of folkish, countryish feel. There’s a rockabilly version of “Victim of Love” and a hillbilly version of “Blue Savannah.”
SCENE: This is Erasure’s first visit to Nashville.
CLARKE: With this acoustic setup, I think it’s gonna be quite good.