The immortal, electronic Ramones return with their umpteenth album – and you can rely on them like clockwork. Every three or four years, there’s a new album of timeless melodies, but what there is – or isn’t, depending on your view – is much in the way of progression. Really, Erasure haven’t evolved musically after around 1996 : with every song sounding like it could have been written at any point since then. Hence, the electronic Ramones. Or perhaps a disco AC/DC. There’s slow sad songs. There’s faster numbers. There’s midpaced singles built on memorable motifs that only Vince Clarke could write. Erasure might be a one trick pony, but good God, it is an incredible trick better than 99% of other bands on the planet.

It’s well produced, with elegant and sleek sounds and minimal, layered lines,and Andy Bell’s singing is fantastic – broad, clean, and ideal. He’s probably the most suitable foil Vince Clarke has worked with ; but somehow the combined effect of the whole album is actually less than the sum of the aprts. Each song is well constructed, but they all have the same flavour, the same feel, and the same overall tempo. Even on multiple listens, it’s difficult to separate the songs into discrete identities ; Song 3 sounds the same as Song 4 sounds the same as… though “Shot A Satellite” has some backing vocals and a unpredictable vocal melody in one verse that reminds you that people, and not robots, made this.

By the time we get to ‘Side 2’, of a sorts, with “Tower Of Love”, which starts to shift the speed and feel ; but it sounds like a more mature, experienced revisiting of “You Surround Me”. It’s only by the time we get to the eighth song – the glorious “New Horizons” – that the stylistic trends are stripped away to just a piano and effects, and Andy Bell is able to inhabit the songs without having to service a drum machine. Is it a glorious return to form? Absolutely not. It’s another, reliable Erasure album of 10 new Erasure songs that reminds you of why you liked them : it’ll never blow your mind or be regarded as their best, but it’s as good as anyone would expect the eighteenth Erasure album in 35 years to be.