Yazoo: Upstairs At Eric's - 1982

I remember in early 1982 a girlfriend telling me she had seen this group in a pub comprising "a fat girl with a great voice and a bloke on keyboards". She couldn't remember the group's name. They were singer Alison Moyet and ex-Depeche Mode keyboardist Vince Clarke - Yazoo, and within months they were huge. Synth-pop was all the rage, and very few did it better, initially, than these two.

This album, according to Clarke, was recorded very much in an ad hoc style, and Moyet's inexperience in a recording studio became one of its plus points, leading to an unusual, experimental sort of album. Incidentally, they were known as "Yaz" in the USA.

What Yazoo also managed to convey was emotion - something unusual in amongst all that cold, detached synth-dominated sounds and style - and nowhere was this better exemplified than on the group's massive number one single, the now iconic Only You. I loved it at the time and still do and the popular opinion was right about the emotion - it is there in both Moyet's vocal and Clarke's instantly recognisable, memorable keyboard parts. It is simply a great single and a worthy number one, mixing cool keyboard vibes with catchy, moving pop to perfection.

Also impressive are the album's other two singles, Don't Go and Situation, both of which were synth-funky dance floor hits. They were prime for remixes and for the burgeoning trend for 12" singles. Bring Your Love Down (Didn't I) sounds like a Hot Chocolate title and it is another dancey number, full of bassy, sonorous thump. 

The experimental thing that Clarke alluded to when he spoke of trying things put in the studio could be found in the oddball I Before E Except After C, Winter Kills and Bad Connection, all of which were a bit strange, but this was the age of quirky keyboard messing around. In My Room is not the Brian Wilson song, by the way, and Goodbye 70s finds Alison missing those now long gone punk days. 

Overall, it was an alluring and interesting album, very representative of its era.