Christopher Frost
Torsten In Queereteria
Track Listing
“Torsten In Queereteria” is the third solo album by Andy Bell (Erasure) performing as his alter-ego, Torsten. The CD comes with a richly illustrated 32 page lyric booklet.
“Torsten In Queereteria” is a unique pop / musical theatre collaboration between Erasure singer Andy Bell, poet/playwright Barney Ashton-Bullock and musician Christopher Frost. This new album, three years in the making, is structured around four separate themed ‘Acts’ which deal with different aspects of both Torsten’s life story and his self-realisation; each song designed as if a postcard insight into a particular hot-spot of memory.
Torsten The Bareback Saint can be bought from Cherry Red, iTunes and Amazon.
The album is also available as a limited edition deluxe CD/hardback book from Cherry Red.
Album Reviews
"Divided into four acts, Queereteria vacillates between nihilist tendencies and reflective introspection. So, too, the music shifts in tone and genre. Bell’s playful, scabrous duet with new wave icon Hazel O’Connor, If We Want To Drink A Little, is evocative of Weimar cabaret, a la The Threepenny Opera; whereas the brilliantly named Come And Taste My Breakdown operates in a defiant squidgy keyboard strut, and gorgeous torch songs like We Hadn’t Slept For Twenty Years and A Hundred Years Plus Today are utterly stripped-back, but no less pointed."
(Lorna Irvine - theweereview.com, April 2019)
"it’s got oodles of wit, charm, astonishing vocals, lovely arrangements ... and gosh darnit lovely tunes. I’m not sure what people say “that’s showbiz” to these days, but they probably should say it in the direction of this record."
(Kev Nickells - freq.org.uk, April 2019)
"from the soaring ‘A Hundred Years Plus Today’ that opens the collection of songs, to the austere poetry of ‘Lowland Lowriders’, to the bawdy ‘Cabaret Awayday’ to the nod to Brecht / Weill on ‘If We Want To Drink A Little’ (with Hazel O’Connor) here we find Andy Bell utterly – and willingly – transformed, in no small part thanks to Barney Ashton-Bullock’s inventive lyrics and Chris Frost’s endlessly adaptable playing."
(Matt Smith - Clash, April 2019)
Act 1: Remembrance, Youth And Beauty
1. A Hundred Years Plus Today
2. You Stampede An Open Wound
3. Lowland Lowriders
4. I Am Of The Sea
Act 2 : The Hedonism And The Hurting
5. Cabaret Awayday
6. Queereteria
7. If We Want To Drink A Little
Act 3 : Bitter Regrets
8. Thou Shalt Be My Vibe
9. Money With Menaces
10. Let's Be Sober Another Time
11. Come And Taste My Breakdown
Act 4 : To Mourn And To Miss
12. To Know Good Men From Perverts
13. We Hadn't Slept For Twenty Years
14. Silence Is Golden
15. Not Opting Out