Erasure's Violet Flame Tour
With Nina
Fillmore Miami Beach
Friday, September 12, 2014
Much respect to Erasure for this past Friday night. The British duo of singer-songwriter Andy Bell and songwriter-keyboardist Vince Clarke know that their bread and butter lies in the early part of their career, and they are not ashamed. Even though it's called the Violet Flame Tour, after the duo's new album, much of the evening's music covered material from the mid '80s to early '90s. And the near-capacity Fillmore Miami Beach ate it up like synth pop had never gone out of fashion.
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Nina, a pretty young lady from Germany, warmed up the crowd as a youthful torchbearer of electronic pop. She was accompanied by Laura Fares who played electronic drums and cued up samples on a laptop.
Nina sang silky and sincere against mostly pulsing melodies that hardly shifted. Unfortunately, almost every song had a moment of mic feedback, and the density of the churning electronics sounded low and muddled. Though there was polite applause and cheers, the biggest rise she got from the crowd was when she asked, "Who's excited to see Erasure?"
Though Nina made a genuine attempt to capture the basics of synth-pop while keeping it contemporary with a dark edge, most everyone was ready to go back 20 or so years for the now legendary Erasure.
In fact, the crowd seemed more excited about the '80s pop hits, from Paula Abdul to Spandau Ballet, that played between Nina's brief set and the appearance of Erasure. By the time "Don't You (Forget About Me)" came on, the crowd was singing along so loud, they drowned out the music coming from the sound system.
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