Erasure's Andy Bell Keeps Politics Out of His Songwriting

Andy Bell is used to political questions. Openly gay and HIV positive, the longtime Erasure lead singer can't help but be a spokesperson, particularly at a time when Great Britain has just elected a Conservative prime minister.

"I don't mind," Bell tells Spinner while discussing his second solo album, 'Non-Stop,' out now via Mute. "To be honest, I don't read up on major political stuff all the time, so I'm really just the average person on the street asking about stuff."

Listening to 'Non-Stop,' few would confuse Bell for a rabble-rousing activist. Clubbier and more rhythmically aggressive than much of Erasure's ultra-melodic electropop, the album is about finding love, losing love, scoffing at reality TV and hanging out with Debbie Harry, a friend and recent tour mate Bell name-checks in 'DHDQ,' lovingly comparing her to a drag queen.

Cast in the dizzying flash of nightclub strobes, Bell's new music is shiny and happy but often quite dark -- a mix he and producer Gabriel Pascal, his collaborator on the project, set out to achieve. One thing the music isn't is topical, as Bell says his political outlook rarely, if ever, informs his songwriting.

"In some ways, I wish it would," he says. "But I'm kind of really not that much of a reactionary person. I'm quite shy, and even when I have been on marches and stuff, I never like to be in the front very much. I like to be in the middle, with all the crowds."

"It's like that with my music as well," he adds. "I'm not really an aggressive person. In some ways, I wish sometimes that it could be more and stick up for myself more and say things to people's faces, but I never want to hurt other people."

As for David Cameron, Britain's new leader, Bell isn't rushing to judgment.

"We'll have to see," he says. " I remember being in a gay bar in the West End [on election night] and sitting next to this guy, this young guy who said he's Conservative and he thought [Cameron] was really cool. And then there are things on the Internet with him affiliating with these right-wing politicians in Europe and stuff. You just have to see him show his true colors and if he really is more progressive."