For reasons you will understand at the end of this article, I put no numbers or order of merit for these pieces. I cried a bit, with just love, and appreciation for these artists, their music, their message, and… for you wonderful people.
Erasure : Wings Of Love
Vince Clarke and Andy Bell just dropped the news that the new Erasure album is called RADIO!! RADIO!! and it lands on 12 March 2027. Forty years into this thing and they’re still coming out swinging.
I first heard them when I was thirteen. I never once imagined I’d still be listening at fifty, let alone fifty-three next week. Hell, I never really planned on making it to fifty. Yet here we are, and the obsession never cooled. I’ve got the full catalog, the side projects, the deep cuts, the vinyl, the bootlegs, the whole mess. I’ve interviewed Andy twice and still post their stuff like a man with no shame, because there is none. When something hits you that hard at thirteen and still hits at fifty-three, you don’t pretend it’s casual.
The new single is pure Erasure: bright, insistent, emotionally charged, the same positive voltage that got its hooks in me four decades ago. It sounds like the band that made me fall in love with them in the first place, only sharper and more lived-in.
They’re already out on a European run with Ladytron as support — which is almost unfairly perfect casting. American dates are coming. When they do, it’s going to be the old songs, the new songs, and everything in between that still makes this band feel necessary.
For now, play the single loud. The rest of us will be right there with you when the album drops and the tour hits. Forty years on and they’re still doing the one thing they were always best at: making the future feel possible.
Trixie Mattel’s “Ghost on the Moon”
We all know the brand: razor-sharp camp, cosmetic-palette jokes, the whole glitter-and-side-eye package that makes you smirk even when you try not to. That’s the Trixie most people show up for. This one is different as it caught me off guard in the best way.
It’s a Halloween song, sure, but it doesn’t lean on the usual bag of tricks. Instead it arrives as a clean, warm acoustic track with vocals that feel lived-in and surprisingly tender. The first time it hit my speakers I was right back on a cold sidewalk in Montreal, the kind of night where the air bites and every corner seems to be leaking soft music from somewhere. That exact feeling — quiet, a little lonely, weirdly comforting — came flooding in.
The song doesn’t overreach. It just sits there and means something. Beautiful in a low-key, unforced way. Another small reminder that Trixie can still surprise you when she decides to stop winking for a minute and just sing.
Thao’s “Nguyen Nguyen Lose Lose”
A queer Vietnamese-American artist working in a sharp, restless art-rock mode, she delivers the song like a transmission from somewhere slightly outside ordinary language. The lyrics are dense, image-heavy poetry. The delivery sits somewhere between spoken word and song, carrying that cool, deliberate cadence that immediately calls Laurie Anderson to mind without ever feeling like imitation. It’s the sound of someone carefully taking her own identity apart and putting it back together in public. It doesn’t ask for your attention. It takes it.
I already liked her work. This track made me respect her. After one listen I went straight into the catalog and stayed there. There’s a rare combination of intellect, feeling, and formal control happening here that doesn’t come around often.
She’s heading out on tour soon. If the records already leave this kind of residue, the live show is going to sit with people long after the lights come up. Some artists entertain. Thao makes you think, and then she makes you keep thinking.
She also teamed up with The Ally Coalition and is donating part of all the proceeds from this tour to LGBTQ causes, Ok, that’s enough of a reason to love her.
HAAi – Ignition (Live at Home)
HAAi has been one of the quiet constants in my listening for years now.
Last year’s album was a full-throated embrace of queer identity — the kind of record that doesn’t just welcome people in, it builds them a home and leaves the light on. The new one, DIGITiSE, opens the windows and lets the whole electric night pour through. It’s an expansive, carefully built electronica voyage: deep soundscapes, patient grooves, and the sense that you’re being guided somewhere worth going.
This particular clip was filmed live in her own home. No stage lights, no crowd noise, just HAAI and the machines, close enough that you can feel the room. It’s a small transmission, but it’s more than enough to get the hook in.
There’s a large body of work out there if you want to disappear into it. Start here if you haven’t already. HAAI isn’t simply part of the queer electronica landscape. At this point she feels like one of its matriarchs. If you were to hear one of our conversations, you would think we are unprofessional.
Tinlicker & Helsloot : Edge Of Forever
Tinlicker & Helsloot rolled through Salt Lake two weeks ago and reminded everyone in the room that the old rave spirit never actually left. It just got more refined.
I was one of maybe three straight guys in the building that night, and it didn’t matter for a second. The whole place was locked into the same frequency. At one point Hero leaned into the mic and shouted something close to “Love you fucking want to love,” and the room answered like it had been waiting years to hear it said out loud.
Their music carries that rare uplifting voltage — the kind that makes your body move before your brain catches up, the kind that feels like it could soundtrack a spirit crossing over after finishing something beautiful. Live, they deliver the full cosmic glide: pure lift, pure motion, pure temporary peace.
This track gives you a clean hit of the same feeling. Play it loud enough and you can almost see the lights again.
Soft Cell : The Space Inside
I put Soft Cell at the far end of this list on purpose.
Before Erasure, before Depeche Mode, before most of what we now casually call synth-pop, there was Soft Cell. Marc Almond’s voice and Dave Ball’s machines. I stood only a few feet from that particular royalty earlier this year, sharing a bill with Alison Moyet and The Human League, and the feeling still sits in my chest like something I will carry for the rest of my life.
Dave Ball knew *OPVS FINALVS* (and the album that became *Danceteria*) would be the last music he would ever make. He was already living with terminal illness, and they poured everything that remained into it. The result is not a farewell note. It is a complete, unapologetic Soft Cell record — quirky, melodic, emotionally precise, and still built for movement. “The Space Inside” carries every signature they ever owned: the melancholy under the glitter, the pulse that makes you want to dance anyway, the strange little dignity that always lived inside their best work.
I do not play this album as a memorial. I play it as a celebration of a man who simply liked being odd, who loved tinkering with synthesizers and sequencers, and who spent more than forty years handing us reasons to feel a little freer. Marc Almond said it best: “Dave was Soft Cell. I just got to sing for it.”
I shook Dave’s hand once in the Nineties and talked with him for about three minutes. He was unassuming, friendly, a little quirky, and completely without pretension. Exactly the person the music always suggested he might be.
This week marks the anniversary of his passing.
David James Ball
3 May 1959 – 22 October 2025
Rest easy, Dave. The machines are quieter now, but the songs still move.