album // Wild!
Following the success of both The Innocents
and the Crackers International EP, Erasure's Vince
Clarke and Andy Bell again hooked with the latter's producers
- Mark Saunders and Gareth Jones - for their fourth
album, 1989's Wild! The result was an album that embraced
modern digital technology such as samplers, whilst also pointing
toward the analogue sound of its follow-up, Chorus.
The sleeve's bold, fluid design was created by Me
Company, and also incorporates a photograph by Pierre et Giles,
the Parisian duo who blend photography with subtle paintings, in
many ways best known for their work with Marc Almond. In this case,
their work results in an image of the angelic-looking Vince and
Andy dressed as soldiers while Autumnal leaves fall around them.
It is a beautifully-posed shot, Andy and Vince gazing sullenly to
the right of the image like in old war photos, the viewer never
quite knowing what the subjects are looking at. It is an excellent,
evocative image, worthily justifying Pierre et Giles' credentials
as masterful image makers.
Wild! spawned four singles - 'Drama!', 'You
Surround Me', 'Blue Savannah' and a remixed 'Star' - and contains
a number of other examples of Erasure at their songwriting best.
The album commences with the instrumental mix of 'Piano Song', the
vocal version of which closes the album. It is a melancholy start
to the album - a sullen, er, piano song with a synthetic string
melody that is beautifully maudlin. The blissful 'Blue Savannah'
follows, joined seamlessly to 'Drama!' via an atmospheric clap thunder
and eerily pealing bells.
'How Many Times?' is a beautifully fragile ballad
- 'How many times will I regret the chances taken?' sings
Andy in a deeper key than usual (but one that he still managed to
pull off effortlessly on stage), while Vince supplies a liquid,
flowing bassline, sparse drum machine pattern, melodic, clipped
acoustic guitars and organic digital synth lines. This is followed
by the original version of the hyperactive 'Star', which has a very
densely-layered rhythm and a muddy sound which Daniel Miller's
single mix clarified. 'Star' is an intricate, joyous song which
benefits from headphones - you can really hear how clever the percussion
sounds are. 'La Gloria' is perhaps one of the campest Erasure songs
ever recorded, a Spanish guitar-inflected number detailing a raucous
bar or nightclub filled to bursting point with excess and decadence
- something which Andy evokes with vaudevillian perfection as his
voice fluctuates up and down like a flamenco dancer's skirts. To
experience this song in its full over-the-top glory, there is a
Wild! tour video shot at the now-defunct London Docklands
Arena, which finds Andy tearing into this song wearing a skirt and
blonde wig. The track ends with atmospheric street scene, leading
into the sensual synths of 'You Surround Me'.
'You Surround Me' and the following track, 'Brother
And Sister' really paved the way for Vince's analogue period, the
latter track deploying layers of retro sounds and angular synths.
Andy sings in an unusual tone on this dark song of family commitments,
and the 'garden of lies' that suggests it wasn't all rosy.
'2,000 Miles' finds Andy in soulful mood on this bitterly resentful
- and amusingly clever - track. He sings about how grateful he is
to be a long way away from a former lover, punctuating each line
with a descriptive utterance, eg 'Had to get me to the church
on time / To say that silly I do I do nursery rhyme', which
is followed by a falsetto chorus of 'I do I do I do I do I'.
In contrast, 'Crown Of Thorns' is pretty serious,
a dark, evocative piece decribing how England's 'Rose is choked
by its thorn', likely to be a reaction to Thatcherite Britain.
Its about the only Erasure song I can think of with a 'political'
theme, and it certainly stands out because of both its rich lyrical
tapestry and its musical backdrop, which is woven through with shards
of unusual sounds, and - according to inventive Mr Clarke - the
sound of his girlfriend's bike chain. Closing track, 'Piano Song'
is simply Andy on vocals and Vince on piano, creating what he describes
as a very 'Russian' sound. It's a very moving song, Andy's vocals
reminding me now of Ed Harris' withered, dying character in The
Hours, sitting on a window ledge, bitterly considering his life
in his final hours.
I'd for some reason got it into my head that Wild!
is a poor album sandwiched between two of Erasure's best. In fact,
the songwriting and sonic experimentation mark their fourth album
proper out as a classic piece of adventurous electronic pop.
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