1992 Erasure: Abba-Esque

I can tell you from memory that Abba's UK stock circa 1992 wasn't at a premium. The recent past really was another country, and whilst it's fair to say that they'd never really gone away completely, their name was only there to be dropped in an eyebrow raising 'look how funny they were' dismissal of seventies kitsch culture that saw them lumped in as part and parcel of tartan trousers, kipper ties, Ford Cortinas and lava lamps. Not everybody of course, but popular culture and mass acceptance had moved on without taking Bjorn and the gang along with it and it left them stranded as a tolerated memory rather than a genuinely fond one, and something that UK folk were as keen to put behind them as post war Germans were of the Nazis.

All changed now - nostalgia became big business with the turn of the century with the BBC's series of 'I Love' programmes that brought some sun to what were previously regarded as winters of discontent and the seventies/eighties came to provide a rich seam of cultural touchstones and shared memories that, once regarded as straw, could now be spun into the gold of cash. Abba's corpse was as fair game as anything else and it was given the initial kiss of life via tribute acts like Bjorn Again spreading the word while later, the musical 'Mamma Mia' unfroze hearts, removed stigma and cemented Abba as everybody's favourite singalongaseventies band, even if some still feel the need to caveat their liking with the defence of irony. A simplistic analysis true, but accurate enough for my purposes.

Erasure's EP played no small part in kick-starting this re-juvenation. In some ways it was a brave move - a successful pop act at their peak risking potential career suicide by rewinding the clock to revive four songs from a discredited band. But then on the other hand, not that brave at all - Vince Clark was a man born with a ear for a good tune and he knew that, when stripped of all the glam and glitter, Abba came stuffed full of them. Over the course of the four songs on this EP, he unpicks their backbone so that each is driven by a core synthesiser bounce that spotlights the main melody inherent in each. Yet despite their back to basics execution, the four songs on offer here are rendered curiously flat and impersonal, reduced to their lowest common denominator with the emotional core so important to the best of Abba's songs removed until they're plucked out as a karaoke backing track with an unwanted vocal. And 'unwanted' because what's also sorely lacking are the dynamic sparks that flew from the clash of Anni-Frid and Agnetha's ice and fire vocals. Put simply, Andy Bell's nasally whine can't compete and it adds little to the tunes, least of all personality.

Take the opening lines of 'SOS' as a case in point - "Where are those happy days, they seem so hard to find" - Agnetha's vocal was heartbreaking in its resignation, a sense of human fragility underpinning the juggernagught of a chorus that made it something more than a simple pop tune. In contrast, Bell's disinterest lights no fires and his overly respectful approach vacuums out all the joy to render it a flat plain carried by the tune, itself served up on the same low key keyboard tricks Clark learned back in his Depeche Mode days. The same goes for the remainder - 'Voulez Vous' former icy glide gets fitted with snow tyres to cramp its style, and while 'Lay All Your Love On Me' aims for trance anthem status, it's brought down to earth by Bell's disinterest. The only real addition of note is an MC Kinky rap over 'Take A Chance On Me' that's as unexpected as a black cloud in a clear blue sky and it fires a shotgun blast into the face of the tune's jovial bounce to kill it dead.

In fairness, Erasure always saw this project as a diversion with nobody trying to re-invent the wheel and on that level the EP is pop fun and perfect fodder for a provincial nightclub playlist on a nineties Saturday night. But there's a strain about the songs that tarnishes their efforts, of trying to take the songs to a place where they really don't want to go. Like your dad showing he's still got 'it' at the disco, appreciation borders on humouring toleration and is in any case firmly on a camp and ironic level only (though when something is as formulaic, predictable and ordinary as this then there can be no surprise that it finds its own level).