Forty years at the top in pop is not to be sniffed at. And if you’ve got thirty-five Top 40 hits and five chart-topping albums under your belt to show for it, then you move into the territory of having ‘national treasure’ attached to your name. Truth is, Andy Bell (the Erasure one, not the Ride/Oasis one – easy to tell apart as one is a flamboyant entertainer known for occasionally wearing rubber leotards, and the other one is half of Erasure) is somewhat more than that. One of the great gay and out lungsmiths with a catalogue of pumping empowering anthems a-plenty, Andy Bell‘s position in the pantheon is so significant that I was genuinely annoyed Erasure’s formation in 1985 ruled them out of contention to throw all the flowers at for my book 1984: The Year Pop Went Queer.
Turning sixty and heading to Nashville to record his third solo album – or eighth it you include his Torsten The Bareback Saint projects – allows Bell to exist outside the Erasure bubble. Working with producer and co-writer Dave Audé (with whom he has previous, although not quite so much previous as with Vince Clarke), he’s come up with ten numbers that linger plenty enough for earwormery to set in. Operating in the comfort zone of his pop/dance/gospel template, he’s always been the cheerleader for Erasure’s big pop side, and Ten Crowns, despite sounding like the name of a pub (it’s actually a reference to Tarot cards) allows him to romp freely and embrace his general Andy Bell-ness.
Across songs with ingredients such as optimism, embracing life and a general uplift against forces that – either interior or exterior – threaten to swallow you up, Ten Crowns takes the listener for a joyful ride – quite literally on the opener ‘Breaking Thru The interstellar’, where a vocodered Bell darts among the rave stabs with an ecstatic nod to ‘Nightflight To Venus’.
There’s a clubbiness to the album that usually doesn’t quite get let in to the sealed perfection of Erasure. Bell has his tits out and is breathing the dry-iced air of nights out in places where Shazam is of no help on ‘Lies So Deep’ In a bid to keep Radio 2 onside, there’s the single ‘Don’t Cha Know’, which musically seems to be where Charli XCX and Clean Bandit venn, and long-time hero and chum Debbie Harry pops up to dispense her effortless Debbie Harry-ness on the fantastic ‘Heart’s A Liar’.
Ten Crowns isn’t breaking any new sonic ground. Not that it really needs to. Bell has made an album that gently expands the palette of what he’s known for, but also allows him to shine as himself rather than as one half of pop’s greatest odd couple.
