Only Cher. Only. Cher... tops Andy Bell in terms of relishing a good costume change. The art of the costume change has been a vital part of Andy Bell's career almost from the moment he and Depeche Mode defector Vince Clarke – the long-suffering, taciturn Teller to Bell’s Penn - joined forces to establish the synth-pop institution we now know so very well as Erasure in the mid-80s. But despite all those delicious costume changes – the great big feathers, the ass-less chaps and cowboy hats, the rubber, the leather, the barbed wire (okay, so I’m making that bit up, but I wouldn’t put it past him) – the music of Erasure has remained largely unchanged in the twenty-plus years they’ve been together.
And, okay, as templates go, theirs is a mightily durable one - short, sweet songs that are as immediately intoxicating and soulful as chocolate, but as fruity and colorful and chewy as the various nuts and cremes of a Whitman's Valentine's Day sampler. It's this very formula that landed them their first series of hit singles, culminating in their international hit (and U.S. breakthrough) album The Innocents and songs like "Chains of Love" and "A Little Respect". But if that album represented the very pinnacle of the group's commercial fortunes - a triumph of ambitionless art - it also suggested the outer limits of their chocolate box of choice.
So then there was Wild!, a zealous mess of an album that feels like a night spent with Andy Bell as he recklessly surveys the contents of his costume shop trying on this, trying on that, finding a phony ruby slipper on the floor, tossing it over his shoulder, digging out his Carmen Miranda get up, trying on various shades of lipstick and rouge, feathers, feathers, feathers galore, but also a not-very-innocent altar boy robe, some ripped-up bitchy school-girl blue jeans, a pair of snakeskin cowboy boots, and, oh dear, heaven knows what else - all the most sacred accoutrements of artful artifice.
For once, all the reckless flamboyance of Erasure's stage shows turned up in the duo's songwriting for better and worse. The happy predictability of their previous three records jettisoned, sometimes violently, again and again and again, in one thrilling "What Not To Wear" episode after another, the what-not-to-wear-est of all being a three minute Latina drag show called "La Gloria", which may have been the foremost inspiration for Hank Azaria's Agador Spartacus in The Birdcage. There's "Brother and Sister", a frenetic tale of growing up the family outcast where Bell's falsetto threatens to sprout wings and carry Bell off to Great Wherever with it, even as the melody betrays a vengeful gothic edge.
There's "2,000 Miles", a snotty kiss-off worthy of Debbie Harry - I need to be at least 2,000 miles away from you, Andy sings - which ends on a passing, tossed-off allusion to Blondie's "Heart of Glass"; and the frantic "Star" - probably my least favorite Erasure single ever, by the way - clearly the work of a Ritalin-starved mind, a song that can go from "Armageddon is Here!" to "Did you ever have a lover leave you for another" in two notes or less.
The scary thing is that, at least for the first five minutes or so, you don't see any of this coming. Wild! opens unassumingly with a sleepy piano instrumental of little note (umm, yeah, that would be "Piano Song - Instrumental") followed by the uncharacteristically understated, light-hearted melody of "Blue Savannah", whose general vibe of lazing in a wide-open-space is broken only by a supernifty vocal break in the middle where wayward gangs of Andy Bells wander in and out of the melody in country-inspired harmonies. (Erasure have taken to performing the number as a totally gay bluegrass hoedown in recent shows.)
But then, the thunder rolls and the lightning strikes - "Blue Savannah" ends - and out of the dull clanking of one of those artsy craft store windchimes, Bell's voice emerges - all quivery plumage and portentous vibrato - singing one of his most strenuously verbose lyrics - is that not within your realm of understanding, a fifty second capacity of mind too demanding, whoa then, poor unfortunate you - before the beat picks up and Vince Clarke proves once and for all that he can match Bell's flamboyance (and surpass it) with a sonic trick bag deeper than Mary Poppins's, from space blips, to studio juries shouting "guilty" and great big, mallet-struck bells, galloping basslines and all manner of endangered tropical species synthesizer sounds. It's the one moment when the duo's creative frenzy seems to pay real and ongoing dividends.
The best moments on Wild! are generally the least wild. The spare, gorgeous ballad "How Many Times?", where Bell flaunts his lower range against a backdrop of fake plastic Spanish guitar plucking; and the oceanic swirl of "You Surround Me" with its heavenly choirs and earth-shaking stomp of a beat. "Crown of Thorns" is a dark, bitter hymn on the state of England, dripping with fragrant black bile, the song's as forboding and medieval as the ravens that haunt the Tower of London. As a lyricist, Andy Bell has grown complacent in his middle age, but this song offers a terrific reminder of his mad, mood-setting skillz:
Fire of the sun, flowers crumble into dust
The seed shall scatter and die
Light in her eyes pours black on their lives
We gather round the funeral pyre
Eat your heart out, Martin Gore!
The truth is that I really kinda like Wild!. Sure, it's scattered, and frenzied, and just a tiny bit schizophrenic, and very, very, oh-so-very queeny (even by Erasure standards); but its energy is undeniable, Andy Bell’s reckless vocal prowess is indomitable, and Clarke’s layered, buzzy arrangements are full of eye-popping surprises. It's not an album that you want to listen to very often, but when you do, it's always an exhausting good time.
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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
"Wild!" by Erasure
Mute / Sire / Reprise Records
Released 1989
Produced by Gareth Jones, Mark Saunders & Erasure
38 min.
SONGS: Piano Song-Instrumental - Blue Savannah - Drama! - How Many Times? - Star - La Gloria - You Surround Me - Brother and Sister - 2,000 Miles - Crown of Thorns - Piano Song
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