Electric Blue

Decked out in blue bodypaint and a scowl of PW Botha proportions, Andy Bell looks like a taunting Scary Smurf on the cover of his debut solo effort.

But Erasure’s singer hasn’t gone hardcore — ‘Electric Blue’ is a disco full of high energy dance tracks, big on beats and low on subtlety. This is all about swinging that feather boa in the air, dahling.

And on tracks like the hyperkinetic ‘Crazy’ and unstoppable ‘I Thought It Was You’ (an inspired duet with The Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears, who somehow manages to out-camp Bell), Bell proves that he can hold his own against the likes of Kylie and Madonna.

But with variety in short supply, the beats, synth textures and torch-song vocals become too familiar too quickly so that not even ‘80s electronica diva Claudia Brucken can bring much flare to the party with her contributions (‘Love Oneself’ and ‘Delicious’).

Bell can probably point his blue finger at the production team — although Manhattan Clique are sought-after remixers, with Moby and Goldfrapp amongst their clients, this marks the pair’s debut as writer-producers.

As such the boys may know how to twiddle the knobs, but they’re a little short on their own creative ideas, repeatedly pulling the same tricks out of their mixing desk.

When they try to be slightly different, momentarily dismantling their wall of beats and rhythms on the ballads ‘The Rest of Our Lives’ and ‘Fantasy’, Bell’s solo outing sounds decidedly like an Erasure album, occasional acoustic guitar notwithstanding.

But at least the pair of songs isn’t bad — which is more than can be said for the faux gospel-meets-soul of the sunny (and oh so cheesy) ‘Shaking My Soul’. It might sound a little different from the songs around it but, even on a collection as samey as ‘Electric Blue’, that’s no blessing.