wordplay by
Brian Kenney

With Union Street, synth pop masters  of  the  late  80's Erasure, step in with a fresh approach to some of their earliest  hits.  Union  Street reinvents keyboardist Vince Clarke and singer Andy Bell classics such as (the ironically titled at least for this disc) "Piano Song," and "Rock Me Gently" with slide guitar and solemnly plucked acoustic in vain of Americana / Alt Country while the genre is hot. (We've seen this before, remember just about every early 90's CD capitalized on the success of MTV Unplugged)  Nevertheless it seems as if some of the tunes, namely "Boy" and "Spiralling," which were certainly conceived on a simple acoustic guitar, were originally born into country and western, but bastardized with the synthesizer for the sake of genre flavor at the time reworked in the vain of Ryan Adams and Cowboy Junkies.  The mere fact that we even have a release from the normally reticent reserved and reclusive duo of Clarke and Bell is a testimony unto itself of  their artistic dedication. "We just felt there were songs on our albums that we had missed as songs," says Clarke.

While Union Street lacks in the excitable and hyperactive pop synth anthems that were a once a constant with the band, it is the stripped down mood induced heart-on-the- sleeve emotions that is the divining rod of "Tenderest Moments" and "Alien" which drill into the universal themes that connect the human condition.

May 16th @ Boulder Theater

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