Erasure
Erasure
Snow Globe
(Mute)
It cannot be easy to get into the Yuletide frame of mind in July or whenever it is that musicians have to book studio time to be sure of hitting the lucrative Christmas market, but that is no excuse for this. There's a proud tradition of fine Christmas albums, and Erasure's effort adds nothing to that canon. The originals are the sort of formulaic dilute hi-NRG disco stuff you might expect, so most attention will focus on the classics that Andy Bell and Vince Clarke have chosen to reinterpret in their one-man-and-his-synth-brother way. While Bell clearly imagines himself to have the tonsils, Clarke's bleep-bloop arpeggiating might as well have been phoned in. No previous reading of The Christmas Song is challenged by Bell's lack of warmth - and whatever Clark's accompaniment is intended to invoke, it's nothing like chestnuts roasting by an open fire. The same treatment is meted out to White Christmas and a selection of carols, made all the more meaningless by Bell's lyrical assertion that he doesn't hold with the flummery of religion. Well, leave it alone then, laddie.
Keith Bruce
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