Initial Impressions of Erasure's 'Union Street'

Erasure's 'Union Street' is the latest release from Erasure following the mellow and excellent 'Nightbird'. However, after the very self-indulgent and audacious failure, 'Other People's Songs', and the badly produced* and again indulgent, 'Loveboat', Erasure appeared not to have learned their lessons and instead released yet another self-indulgent album. It is obvious that Andy Bell is in love with his voice as this uninteresting accoustic release sees him singing old Erasure songs to the accompaniment of a guitar. Vince Clarke is reduced to doing the production of a lacklustre vocal and guitar performance. While a few tracks worked well in a raw accoustic form like 'Spiralling', the others just sees Bell droning on and on, singing by numbers. Given his myriad experience in many concert performances, it is puzzling to see such a performance.

Previously, Erasure had released accoustic tracks on singles that were a lot more interesting than this set found in 'Union Street'.

'Union Street' is worth a spin but it is not particularly memorable given the vocal performances and the choice of tracks. What happened to that Erasure of yesteryear, with its glittering pop gems?**

*It seems that Flood would rather produce another U2 album and despite their long association, the production values of 'Loveboat' is appalling. Was Flood drunk when he produced that? It is hard to tell. 'Loveboat' was undistinguished with poor singles but the bad production made it impossible.
** Erasure's 2003 release 'Nightbird' is excellent. I can't understand why they are bothering with this...

Addendum

After listening to it a few more times, 'Union Street' is decent, definitely worth a listen if you like Erasure's work, I do. There are some highlights. However, it does not mean that this is not a self-indulgent work.