Erasure: Tomorrow's World – review

The duo who wrote gems such as "A Little Respect" and "Ship of Fools" should be saluted for a fine 25-year pop career, but this album won't be remembered as vintage Vince Clarke and Andy Bell. It's their first in more than four years, stuffed with big, bright synthetic dance tracks straining for "feelgood": floor-fillers by numbers, were they not dull to the point of paralysing. Even with Frankmusik included among the production credits, these one-time synth-pop pioneers sound lifeless compared with all the 80s-raiding whippersnappers so indebted to them.