album // Reconnected Live
A decade ago, the idea of Yazoo
– Alison 'Alf' Moyet and Vince Clarke
– reforming would have been whimsical thinking. But nowadays
all bands get back together don't they? Led Zep, Take That (with
Robbie Williams now it seems) and The Libertines - all have reformed
of late, if only for lucrative tours or one-off concerts. With Yazoo
reforming for a handful of shows in 2008, Vince fans could have
left themselves thinking 'What's next? Vince re-joining Depeche
Mode?' Then you check Vince's Twitter feed and find that
he's collaborating once again with Martin Gore,
for the first time in nearly 30 years. Nothing surprises anymore.
I didn't get a chance to see Yazoo the first time
around (I was still in short trousers) and in 2008 couldn't find
anyone who liked them enough to come with me to watch their Royal
Albert Hall performance, so I was pleased that they released this
double CD (although exactly which dates were recorded is not clear).
I should have perhaps seen that as inevitable as well.
Two initial observations – firstly, just looking
through the twenty tracks reminds you that Yazoo only had two albums
of material, and Reconnected Live draws together pretty
much all of them. I make it that there's only a couple of tracks
missing – the most obvious ones being 'I Before E Except After
C' (from Upstairs At Eric's, which was definitely in the
'hugely experimental for a pop album' category and thus not exactly
suited to a concert format) and 'Happy People' (from You And
Me Both, which, as it was sung by Vince – sung by Vince!
– was never going to get on the setlist). The B-side 'State
Farm' and the (initially) US-only single 'Situation' get an airing,
the funky / sleazy former fairly surprisingly, the latter much more
obviously (it's a track that never should have just sat on a B-side,
and is presented here in its now-familiar François Kevorkian
NY-disco-friendly extended state).
There is a feeling of unfinished business here;
none of You And Me Both's tracks were ever performed live,
since Vince and Alison called it quits ahead of the album's tour.
This then, documents a tour that should have happened 25 years ago.
The technology to deliver the tour may have moved from a raft of
tapes, Fairlights and early digital synths to a solitary laptop,
but the sounds are mostly true to their album counterparts. There
is an air of 'leaving alone' rather than updating, and that's fine;
only 'The Other Side Of Love' gets a more modern respray, more in
the vein of a late-stage Erasure cover than the
original. A band who had toured these songs many, many times over
the years would have felt the need to revise and revitalise them
to keep them fresh; there's no pressure to do that here. The songs
haven't aged badly at all; 'Only You' still brings a lump to the
throat and 'Goodbye 70s' (which Moyet describes as being about the
end of teenagehood as much as the end of a decade) sounds as fresh
and dynamic as it did back then. 'In Your Room' dumps some of the
vocal alchemy that Eric Radcliffe and Vince applied to the original,
but I didn't even realise that until the very end.
Considering Alison Moyet has, over the years, moved
out of the classy, intelligent pop style that Yazoo perfected in
such a brief period of time into more jazz / blues / stage territories,
and that voice has grown ever more powerful with successive albums,
there was always the risk that her voice had 'outgrown' Vince's
sonic template. I feared that her voice would overshadow the electronic
format completely; those fears were misplaced. Reconnected Live
once again confirms that there was something strangely unique, some
indescribable meeting in the middle that made Yazoo so compelling
the first time around. I still don't know what that ingredient was.
It's probably too much to expect a third album,
but a DVD of the tour wouldn't go amiss, if only because I'm still
smarting that I didn't get tickets. Such a significant event shouldn't
just be confined to an (admittedly beautiful) CD. Two editions are
available - a straightforward CD and a deluxe edition in a hardback
book complete with notes from Alison and a whole host of backstage
monchrome imagery.
cd/lcd/i:
1. Nobody's Diary
2. Bad Connection
3. Mr. Blue
4. Good Times
5. Tuesday
6. Ode To Boy
7. Goodbye 70s
8. Too Pieces
9. In My Room
10. Anyone
11. Walk Away From Love
12. State Farm
13. Sweet Thing
14. Winter Kills
15. Midnight
16. Unmarked
17. Bring Your Love Down (Didn't I)
18. Don't Go
19. Only You
20. Situation
|
