Loveboat (album)

Bell and Clarke wrote most of the songs that were recorded for Loveboat in 1998 with the exception of the lyrics.^[5] Although the duo began recording the new material in 1998, they decided to take a break from Erasure the following year and did not continue the recording sessions until 2000. While Flood, who had produced the first two Erasure albums in the 1980s, received credit as a co-producer, Loveboat was largely produced by Erasure themselves. A lot of the recording of the backing tracks and vocals was carried out with the assistance of Ebby Acquah.^[6]

The duo opted to bring in Flood for the mixing of the album as they wanted someone who could "manipulat[e] the recordings" and "roughen [them] up a bit".^[7] The album's sound significantly changed during the mixing process, which was carried out by Flood and Rob Kirwan. Clarke told them he wanted the album to have a similar sound to Mercury Rev's 1992 album Deserter's Songs. According to Clarke, Kirwan "really [went] for it, hell-for-leather" with the mixing. In a 2000 interview with the Erasure Information Service, Clarke said: "We had all of the songs recorded, then I'd leave Flood and Rob in the studio for a day and they would muck around with it, adding effects and changing things around." Clarke was also directly involved in the mixing process. He gave feedback on Flood and Kirwan's work, and he and Flood also used vocoders to "get a few different textures" out of Bell's vocals. Bell described the finished album as a "very different from the version that we had [before]" and added that the original was "much more acoustic".^[6]

In response to the observation that the album was less upbeat than a lot of their previous work, Bell told the Express & Star: "The reason we sound more melancholy is that we are less gung ho and less ambitious about getting into the charts – we are just more relaxed."^[5]

More information Review scores, Source ...

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[8]
Birmingham Post	[9]
Entertainment.ie	[10]
PopMatters	mixed[11]
Release Music Magazine	[12]
The Scotsman	[13]

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Upon its release, Entertainment.ie considered Loveboat to be "full of soulful, polished electronic soundscapes which can stand alongside their best work". The reviewer added: "Profound they're not – but there's a romanticism and conviction about these lush, string-laden songs that prevents them from descending into Eurovision dross."^[10] Karen Pagett of the Birmingham Post remarked that it "sounds as though Erasure [have] happened upon a cache of their weaker, more pedestrian tracks that were not quite good enough to release in 1988". She described the album as a "pleasant listen overall" with its "crisp" production, "clever synth layers" and Bell singing "with such feeling", but she added that "strong melody is in short supply" and there were the "cheesiest of clichés" in the lyrics.^[9] Fiona Shepherd of The Scotsman called it a "monotonous trawl through mid-paced electro pop territory that Moloko wouldn't wipe their feet on" and a "morose meditation on the downside of love".^[13] In the US, Aaron Badgley of AllMusic described the album as "strong melodic pop music full of angst and pain" and a "classic sounding Erasure album".^[8]

Subsequent to their acquisition of Erasure's back catalog, and in anticipation of the band's 30th anniversary, BMG commissioned reissues of all previously released UK editions of Erasure albums up to and including 2007's Light at the End of the World. All titles were pressed and distributed by Play It Again Sam on 180-gram vinyl and shrinkwrapped with a custom anniversary sticker.

• Erasure – production
• Flood – production
• Ebby Acquah – recording, mixing assistance
• Son Ripoll – recording
• Ben Hiller – additional engineering
• Rob Kirwan – mixing
• Kieran Lynch – mixing assistance
• Ray Staff – mastering
• Intro – design
• Martin Gardiner – computer graphics