sanctuary records | sanxs425 | 29/06/2005

If anyone can explain the lengthy gap between first single, ‘Crazy’ and this, I’d really appreciate that. Just when it looked like Sanctuary had resigned themselves to the fact that Electric Blue, despite carrying a decent suite of (mostly) dance-oriented tracks – of which ‘I’ll Never Fall In Love Again’ is a strong example – was never going to shift in massive quantities outside of Andy Bell‘s Erasure fans, along came a second single.

‘I’ll Never Fall In Love Again’ is an excellent up-tempo number in its original guise which is given a more housey treatment by Goetz on his generally quite laissez faire single mix, but perhaps the biggest draw is an exclusive new track ‘Back Into The Old Routine’ which finds Andy softly celebrating the advent of autumn, although his pastoral lament for finding his usual place in the park does concern me that he’s referencing the sort of acts that some people get up to in such places. That aside, this gentle little song, with its soulful bridge and ‘Don’t Dance’-esque melody, is a fitting full stop to a good first solo album from Bell.

Two further mixes are available from various download sites, including iTunes – the Goetz Extended Mix, which is literally (and nothing more than) just that, and a remix by Mr Do which actually does try to do something slightly different by changing the melodies and augmenting the chorus with a tinkly refrain, but there is something not quite right about the way the vocals are mixed in, as if they were pasted in as an afterthought onto an existing track. In all, it’s worth getting the CD for the B-side, but the mixes are hardly essential.

First published 2005; re-edited 2015.

(c) 2015 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence