Music Features

Erasure at the Cambridge Corn Exchange - Sunday 23rd September, 2007

Erasure blast on to the stage with a rousing rendition of Sunday Girl - followed by a magnificently crowd-pleasing version of Blue Savannah - their equivalent of a 'signature dish' in my opinion.

The queens of 90s synth-pop were not going to disappoint a capacity crowd at what was dubbed for the evening the 'Campbridge Cornex'.

There was, sadly, a distinct lack of leather chaps on show - especially as my friend and I had worn our own for the occasion - however, the fans sported a fine line in feather boas, fluffy cowgirl hats and pretty pink pom-poms.

Erasure clearly still have mass appeal. We spoke to one guy in the audience who'd been to almost all of the gigs on the current tour - which is about to leave our shores for Europe - and claimed to have seen the band over 1,000 times. That borders on the obsessive, methinks, but heck, their live show is no less dynamic now than it was in their heyday.

And this is what Erasure does so well - big shows, big sets. All sparkle and spangle. And they back it up with Vince Clarke's amazing musicianship and frontman Andy Bell's stunning vocals and showmanship.

All the favourites were there - Respect, Ship of Fools, Sometimes, Chains of Love... Oh! Take me back to those heady, hedonistic days of my youth!

An Erasure gig might be more camp than a row of tents, with more mince than a butcher's shop, but yeah, it's the Brit-Synth-Pop equivalent of a full-blown Vegas spectacular.

It's a show-and-a-half, including full costume change part-way through.

We loved it. The crowd loved it. Erasure - come back to Campbridge... soon!