plorentz's Full Review: Electric Blue by Andy Bell
Here in Wisconsin, in the late fall, the menfolk practice the long-revered ritual of the deerhunt. Undeterred by the daily news reports of new cases of Chronic Wasting Disease among the state’s deer population (in fact, encouraged by them, and a sense of duty), men who are normally clean-shaven grow scraggly beards, and men who generally wear beards grow them out Santa Claus style. They commit fearsome acts of violence, not just to ten-and-twelve-point bucks, but also to fashion – donning blaze orange caps (so that, for heaven's sake, they won't shoot each other) and insulated camouflage jumpsuits. They kiss their wives, pack up their pick-ups and head to the north woods.
Meanwhile their ladies stay home, and (so their men think) bake cakes and scrub floors – at night pining away for their rugged hunters while innocently reading their Harlequin romances and playing bridge with their girlfriends, preparing themselves for their husbands’ triumphant return, stiff, frozen, bloody carcasses roped down across their roofs of their tan Fords and Toyotas.
But we mustn’t pity those ladies – these deerhunters’ widows - in those long, cold, just-before-winter days; for, like their men, they more often than not take their husbands’ extended absences as an opportunity to engage in all sorts of amusements that would otherwise be frowned upon. We’re not talking Tupperware parties either, unless, of course, the presenter happens to be a Tom Selleck look-alike who slips off his pants and gets a little jiggy while lustily describing the merits of a certain kitchen utensil.
Oh yes, there’s so much more to deer hunting season than just shooting deer.
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Andy Bell and Vince Clarke have been married for 20 years. Well, not really married in that husband-and-wife sense, but married in our minds as the two guys in a band called Erasure who have charmed us with soulful, romantic, and very gay electronic pop ditties, full of drama and falsetto, flamboyance, costumery, and singalong kiss-offs. But as the years have gone on, Vince Clarke – the silent, straight one – has been increasingly seeking artistic fulfillment elsewhere, most notably with his old technopop veteran buddy Martyn Ware (formerly of Heaven 17), leaving his more vocal partner Andy Bell to spend long vacations in glamorous places during those three year intervals between Erasure records.
But even Andy Bell - the closest thing this world has to a living, breathing, gay superhero - gets the blues. A girl needs to get out of the house and party every now and then. She needs to engage in a project discrete from her marital obligations. She needs to take a moment to be her own husband; she needs to write and – why not? – sing with other people. So that when hubby comes home she’ll be fresh and ready for their next artistic endeavor. Thus we have Bell’s first ever solo record Electric Blue.
Electric Blue is a party record, pure and simple. It’s a night out at the strip club with the girls. Technically speaking, this record is actually less an Andy Bell solo record than any given Erasure album. In Erasure, his only collaborator is Clarke, but here, he writes with a number of casual partners, and sings duets with Claudia Brucker and Scissor Sister Jake Shears. In a sense, Andy Bell has asserted his solo-ness on Electric Blue by inviting over a bunch of friends while his musical hubby Clarke is off on some “business trip”.
The result, like any bachelorette party, is first liberating, and then intoxicating, but as the night wears on, the party goes (as such parties tend to go) a little too long, buzzes turn to stupors, and the whole thing gets a little maudlin and confessional.
Boasting club-ready anthems like lead single ”Crazy”, the slick, slinky, and sleazy title track, and the fabulously trashy ”I Thought It Was You”, the first half of the album is essentially Madonna’s Confessions on a Dance Floor with Andy Bell playing the part of the fuchsia unitard. The latter half devolves into something less purposeful, less focused, more desultory and mood-swingy. ”Fantasy” and the closing ballad ”The Rest of Our Lives” sound like nothing so much as leftovers from a lost Wilson Phillips album, while the horned-up ”Shaking My Soul” sounds garish and costumey and fake-happy.
The turning point of this album is a song called ”Jealous”. Arriving dead center at track 7, the song combines the best of both sides of this party. It’s a got layers upon layers of chirpy synth hooks, a tidy, but unexpected groove, and lyrics that are equally confessional and shameless. And it represents Bell’s best, most subversive performance as a lyricist in at least a decade. It’s a past tense conversation with his boyfriend/hubby/partner about the night before when he’d apparently announced that he was going out for the night to sleep with another guy. Bell’s persona here is brutally honest in that rub-it-in-your-face kinda way, but also, strangely empathetic:
I keep no secrets from you, everything is out in the open
And who I slept with last night makes no difference to us
It can’t be easy to keep your sense of self-control
I know if you were the one who was sleeping around
I’d be jealous as hell
Nice.
But as preposterous as it reads, it rings true. I can hear this conversation taking place between two real people. In fact, I think I may have participated in this conversation myself on more than one occasion, and from both sides.
Sonically, the difference between Electric Blue and any Erasure record is a subtle one. Essentially, it’s just the same old chirpy electronic pop music, only with a stronger club focus in lieu of Vince Clarke’s more artsy approach to programming and arrangement. As such, it’s a nice, mostly enjoyable diversion (that could have used some liberal editing), and bodes well for Andy Bell’s future if, in fact, his partnership with Clarke goes south.
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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
“Electric Blue” by Andy Bell
Sanctuary Records
Released 10/4/05
Produced by Manhattan Clique and Andy Bell
52 min.
SONGS: Intro – Caught in a Spin - Crazy - Love Oneself – I Thought It Was You – Electric Blue – Jealous – Shaking My Soul – Runaway – I’ll Never Fall in Love Again – Delicious – Fantasy – See the Lights Go Out – The Rest of Our Lives
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