Andy Bell – Ten Crowns (Crown Recordings)
★★★★☆
Andy Bell swears it’s a coincidence that his new album arrives both 20 years after his debut solo LP Electric Blue, and that Ten Crowns was made while he turned 60.
It’s a plausible denial, as there’s nothing to Bell’s third solo album that marks it out as dramatically opposed to Erasure. Lyrically, the abstract poetry of The Neon’s companion album Day-Glo is more experimental, while these largely hyper-pop moments would fit just fine alongside any Erasure album from Wild! to The Violet Flame.
It’s tempting to say that Bell’s producer Dave Audé, a huge Erasure fan who’s worked with everyone from Madonna and U2 to Lady Gaga and Rihanna, is living out his fantasies by making rollicking euphoric pop with his hero.
In Erasure shorthand, Bell loves the bangers, Vince Clarke the melancholy. And Ten Crowns is absolutely stuffed with gigantic pop moments.
Heart’s A Liar
Even when Bell does get serious, as on Godspell’s attack on religious hypocrisy or Put Your Empathy On Ice – the only track to break the four-minute mark – despairing of instant celebrity, Bell ensures their message is leavened with headrush choruses.
The main tone is one of exquisite drama, Bell relishing the break-up tale Lies So Deep with gospel singer Sarah Potenza, before living out his own fantasies by duetting with Debbie Harry on the riotous Heart’s A Liar, Harry’s smoky vocals are as extravagant as you’d hope.
Recent adventures away from Erasure have seen Bell mainly focus on the operatics of Torsten The Bareback Saint, but Ten Crowns sees him have a whale of a time being as Andy Bell as most people probably want him to be. That relationship with his public is writ large in the moving closer, Thank You, in which Bell makes clear he knows how lucky he is to get to make music for a living. Bell is fortunate, but so are we that even away from the Erasure mothership he remains so giddily in love with pop.
Ten Crowns is available on vinyl (white, oxblood and picture disc available), CD (standard and 2CD versions), gold cassette and digitally via Crown Recordings. To order click here
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