ERASURE - Chorus (Sire)

No idea how the term "synth-pop" sounded to those who used it when it first arose. Now it's a genre, a style with its own canon, but surely ONCE it had some flavor of "other styles of music played with synthetic instruments"? I don't know. I didn't get how that worked when I was 13 and so Erasure's gospel touches confused me as much as they, perhaps subliminally, put me off.

With this record Erasure 'did' dance music in way that my casual exposure (a little radio, and a greatest-hits collection I found cheap) suggests they didn't before or after. But they've put out a lot of records since I stopped paying attention, so I don't know.

Actually, now that I think about it, Erasure may have been the first band I ever gave up on! The Innocents was the second record I ever bought with my own money; I liked it, but I had definitely discarded the idea of getting further Erasure albums before the next time I encountered anything even somewhat disillusioning (which would have been, I think, Adrian Belew's Mr. Music Head).

FLEETWOOD MAC - Rumours (deluxe reissue) (Warner)

The record itself was new to me, but I waited to write about it until I knew it well enough to comment wisely on the bonus tracks. Not worth the wait, I think! The rough takes differ audibly from the album versions, um, sometimes. Not much. The rough "Dreams" sounds like Nicks is singing to herself, though, an interesting effect and a VERY interesting contrast with the savage "Silver Springs", which I gather decribes, as "Dreams" does, the aftermath of her breakup with Lindsey Buckingham.

Rumours proper, on the other hand... fantastic record. I find myself entertaining notions about it deserving its super-blockbuster status despite the long-standing principle (of mine) that fame has such a distortionary effect on public opinion as for NOBODY to meaningfully 'deserve' popularity of the gargantuan type that Fleetwood Mac achieved. And I'm falling prey to it myself: for whatever reason, about 1000 times more people have bought Rumours than most of the records I find totally indelible. As a result, for one thing I give Fleetwood Mac credit for emotional insight that maybe I shouldn't, and for another thing I imagine my liking Rumours to be some kind of community experience that maybe it isn't.

(Was the title "You Make Loving Fun" ever anything but an awkward euphemism? I mean, did people SAY that back then?)

Anyway, I understand how the blues lope of "Don't Stop" came about but don't care for it, and "Songbird" suffers being sandwiched between two monster songs; other than that, in damn-it-I'm-going-to-forget-context-and-just-decide-if-I'm-hitting-PLAY-again terms, I continue to goggle at how thrilled I am to have heard this.