Iconic eighties duo kick off arena tour in Wales – minus founding member

Nation Cymru staff

One of the biggest groups of the eighties and nineties is set to kick off an arena tour in the Welsh capital in spring 2027 to celebrate the release of their 20th album.

Erasure have launched their 20th album release, Radio!! Radio!! with a new track, ‘Wings Of Love’ alongside details of an arena tour in April / May 2027 across the UK and Europe.

Erasure will take to the road in 2027 for an arena tour beginning in Cardiff Utilita Arena on 25 April before travelling throughout the UK, finishing with a date at London’s O2 Arena then heading to Germany, Denmark and Sweden

Erasure are an English synth-pop duo formed in London in 1985, consisting of lead vocalist and songwriter Andy Bell and songwriter, producer and keyboardist Vince Clarke, the latter previously a co-founder of the band Depeche Mode and synth-pop duo Yazoo.

From their fourth single, “Sometimes” (1986), Erasure established themselves on the UK Singles Chart, becoming one of the most successful acts of the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. From 1986 to 2007, the pair achieved 24 consecutive top 40 entries in the UK singles chart. By 2009, 34 of their 37 chart-eligible singles and EPs had made the UK top 40, including 17 climbing into the top 10. At the 1989 Brit Awards, Erasure won the Brit Award for Best British Group.

Erasure, the Ivor Novello winning duo, have, since their formation in 1985, released a staggering number of albums and singles, in the process leaving an indelible impact on our musical landscape.

From their debut Wonderland (1986) to their twentieth album, Radio!! Radio!!, the enduring pop duo have released an unbroken run of acclaimed albums, selling over 25 million worldwide, and their live performances remain legendary.

From the triumphant but lovelorn ‘Sometimes’, which catapulted the band into the UK charts in 1986, to ‘A Little Respect’, ‘Blue Savannah’, ‘Always’, ‘Who Needs Love Like That’, ‘Chains of Love’ and ‘Hey Now (Think I Got a Feeling)’, the band’s seemingly endless stash of singles are the purest pop: life affirming, warmly familiar yet futuristic.

Radio!! Radio!! finds one of contemporary pop music’s greatest, most beloved songwriting partnerships creating music that’s hopeful and defiant, effusive and ecstatic.

New single ‘Wings Of Love’, which premiered on BBC Radio 2, is already a classic slice of perfect, glassy synthpop, one that captures the human heart of the new album, with Bell singing about love and loneliness, and his gratitude for all those he’s appreciated in his life.

The duo’s first new studio album in six years sees Andy Bell and Vince Clarke continue to refine and deepen the pop edifice they’ve been building over the past 40 years – 2026 marks the 40th anniversary of their debut album – with a set of songs about love, loss and injustice that speaks, powerfully, to our empathy-starved times. “Some of the songs are quite reflective of stuff that’s been going on in my life, but not all of them,” says Clarke. “We didn’t have to think about it or talk about it – it just happened that way.”

Radio!! Radio!! is a uniquely personal record for Erasure, a quality that speaks to the devastating period of grief that the band faced in the years prior to its creation and the incredible bond they have created over 40 years of unbroken time working together. “When you’re a songwriting partnership for so long, it’s very deep, kind of like a soul connection,” says Bell. “You trust that person with your life, and because of the nature of songwriting, you just lay bare your soul. That becomes a sacred space.”

When Bell and Clarke did come together to write again, it was as much in the spirit of uplifting an old friend as it was work. “When something traumatic happens, there’s a profound shift in the way you relate to each other – the respect you have for each other,” says Bell. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the songs they were writing began to take on the tenor of hope and healing. “Vince has helped me through some terrible times, and so I always wanted to be there for him. I think that’s what this album is about,” says Bell.

The songs on Radio!! Radio!! are rooted in Erasure’s unique synth-pop palette with some key augmentation: When working on the sound of this album, Clarke was unusually drawn to piano, inspired by composers like Erik Satie, as well as acoustic guitar. The use of these instruments adds drama and depth to Erasure’s sound: “I found techniques – ways to use piano that sounded really organic, and same with guitar.”

Tour

Vince Clarke will be Musical Director for the tour, but will not be appearing onstage alongside Andy Bell. He explains: “I recently moved to California from New York, and I travelled from here to London. The travelling took a toll – it really messed me up. I never seemed to recover from it. I just thought ‘I don’t want to do this anymore’. I told Andy, and he made me musical director, and I thought, ‘how fantastic is that?’ I can do all my work and all my direction from here, but I don’t have to leave sunny San Diego.”

Bell goes on to say: “I’m so pleased that we were able to find a way for the tour to work for Vince. He’s always too modest but he’s so much more than the Musical Director, Vince is one of the great loves of my life and everything we do as Erasure we decide together.”

You can hear that thread of warmth and mutual care across Radio!! Radio!!, an album that transposes the dazzling hugeness of the duo’s best work onto avowedly more personal, more reflective songwriting material. Bell acknowledges that it would be easier, perhaps, for he and Clarke to go on autopilot, 40 years into their career. But how would that pass as Erasure? “It’s a two-person brain, and everything that we’ve gone through comes into it,” he says. “We have a sense of responsibility. We couldn’t ever do something throwaway.”

The tour will receive support from electro-clash pioneers Ladytron.

Radio!! Radio!! is released by Mute on vinyl, CD and digitally on 12 March 2027.

The Erasure fan presale launches on Wednesday 30 September, with general tickets on sale from Friday 2 October. Sign up for the presale here or at the Cardiff Utilita website.

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