After this show I heard someone say "there were ten songs that everyone wanted to hear but they had to fill it out to 18" - I beg to differ! I have heard that the Rolling Stones always tried to make "an album of singles" but erasure has done so repeatedly (in this show they played the first four, great, tracks from The Innocents, if not in order!) I guess I'll have to wait until next time to hear favorites like Chorus, Star, I Love Saturday, Rain, or some of the nice 2000s songs like Here I Go Impossible Again (Nightbird is a gem of an album - and last year's World Be Gone somehow hit #6 on the UK album chart and I do think it deserved the songs that they played from it like Love You To The Sky.)
Sound-wise, I liked the new arrangements of nearly every classic song (though the generally clear sound mix occasionally got slightly unbalanced and distorted.) It's hard to tell, but there may have been more new synthesis and less sampling of classic tracks and instruments. My minor criticism is that Vince Clarke (and the sound mix engineers for the show) seem to have been somewhat overly influenced by EDM percussion and turned everything into a beat-heavy "club mix," though thankfully more disco than dubstep. Probably great for a club, but in a concert not everything has to be anchored by a heavy 4 on the floor. The Masonic also has seats rather than a dance floor. On the other hand, it's amazing to see the godfathers of modern synth pop/dance, and it's surprising how the occasional supersaw actually works fine in an erasure song. I like how they are willing to experiment a bit. It was nice also to hear live harmonies from the two excellent backup singers, who also managed to dance with both of erasure's principals! And Andy Bell hit his high notes and added some beautiful vocal moments.
I couldn't really tell if Vince was doing much besides pressing play (and a delightfully refined Vince Clarke dance break at more than one point) but he did seem to have more instruments on stage rather than just a laptop - could have been a hardware synth or two and maybe a tempest or other drum machine - and may even have been playing some of them at some point. He also played acoustic guitar along with several songs though it usually couldn't be heard (with a possible exception being A Little Respect, where the acoustic guitar is a key part.) In any case, Andy Bell and Vince Clarke don't seem too full of themselves like so many modern EDM musicians and DJs often are, and they seemed like they were happy to be there!! The audience definitely was as well. More erasure, please.
