Let us go back to a world where the nineties never happened.  If the synthesizers used by Vince Clarke influenced a generation of bedroom dance producers to release club anthems, that is all but lost on Erasure, who choose (probably wisely) to stay stuck fast in their realm of subtle, catchy and harmonic pop tunes.  So, no room here for experimentation or looking forward, as the mostly thirty-something audience would suggest.  Tonight is pure eighties retro, and that's what everyone has paid their money for.

There's just one problem: Erasure have decided to look back beyond their own discography, utilizing this tour to promote their recent release of a very lame album of cover versions (entitled 'Other People's Songs', no less).  While this may go some way to prove that Andy Bell and Vince Clarke are influenced by more than just Abba and Yazoo, as we'd been previously led to believe, the problem with tonight's show is not Erasure per se, but their choice of set list.  Yes, they've a new album to sell, and - very probably - Mute Records to keep afloat (no Erasure, no Echoboy, remember), but why should an act with such a strong back catalogue as Erasure rely on cover versions?  The audience reaction says it all: the glorious 'Ship Of Fools' opens the set, standing up hairs on all but the most concrete of music fans, and within four minutes reminding you why Erasure used to be so damn vital in the dank days of the eighties.  A cover swiftly follows - doesn't matter which, probably their slaughtering of a Peter Gabriel or Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel track - and you sense the entire audience turning to each other and working out between them that "This Isn't One Of Their Old Ones".

As with other Erasure gigs, this feels more like a karaoke night than a real "live" gig.  Vince Clarke sits in front of a laptop clicking a mouse like an IT support worker, and his acoustic guitar strums are barely audible in the mix.  The backing music sounds as if it was sampled straight from the studio master recordings, such as the trumpet solo in the obligatory 'Sometimes' - which still sounds as fresh and modern as it did bank in '86.  Having said that, you'd hardly want to hear these sequenced songs in a band context, would you?  Just as with the Pet Shop Boys, Erasure have become their own tribute band, reeling out hit after hit onstage to a crowd of loyal long-term fans, and refusing to follow the usual long-in-the-tooth path of the so-called "mature" acoustic folk-influenced album.  They do what they do, in their usual flamboyantly dressed way (well, in Andy's case anyway), any make no excuses for not moving on.  Andy Bell m may be beginning to sound as if he has to work hard to hit those high notes now, but it's their job and they refuse to take a redundancy package.

In the period between 1987 (the single 'Sometimes' and 'The Circus' album) and 1994 (the insanely catchy single 'Always' from the album 'I Say I Say I Say') Erasure were the best at what they did - creating well crafted pop songs, with complex vocal harmonies singing mostly throwaway lyrics - the song 'The Circus' (an account of rising unemployment and the dissipation of industrial jobs in the eighties) excepted.  Songs from that era get a rapturous reception tonight, proving that you should always leave the crowd wanting more.  That the venue is far from full leaves suspicions of a declining popularity (their contemporary relevance was lost years ago), but there is undeniably still a market for this sort of thing now that the teenage fans of their early material have grown up into the spendthrifty adults of today.

Review: Andrew Morrison