The drive to Vince Clarke's house heads into the quaint, quintessentially New England village of Damariscotta, then snakes through the downtown, goes out past town limits, and runs through a rural area of open fields. When the pavement turns to dirt and the trees grow dense, it begins to sink in, just how strange it is that one of the fathers of British synthpop music lives out here in the woods on the Maine coast.
Clarke steps out of his four-wheel-drive Jeep Laredo and walks out back, beyond his cedar-shingled cottage with the plastic toy lawnmower on the front porch, down a steeply inclined wooded path, brushing aside branches and stepping over downed pine trees. At the bottom of the path the view opens up, and there it is: the gently flowing Damariscotta River, a rocky shore, an island you can walk to at low tide.
"Nice spot, huh?" he says.
This secluded slice of Maine paradise is the last place one expects to find him living. Clarke, 47, is one of the founding members of the synth-rock band Depeche Mode and the guy who wrote one of the most recognizable songs of the early 1980s, Just Can't Get Enough. He left the band after one album and quickly formed Yaz with the singer Alison Moyet, recording two albums that generated such hits as Don't Go and Situation. In 1985 he formed his most lasting partnership, Erasure, with the flamboyant singer Andy Bell. The odd-couple duo — Clarke is straight, quiet, and introspective; Bell is gay, outgoing, and talkative — has put together an impressive string of discs and hits over the past 22 years, including their best-known song, A Little Respect, which quickly became a gay-pride anthem.
Erasure's 13th studio album, Light at the End of the World, arrived Tuesday. Like most of its predecessors, it is very much music of the city — tight pop songs with pulsating dance beats and hook-filled melodies carved with drum machines, electronic keyboards, and computers. So it is a little startling to learn not only that the album was recorded in a house in Maine but that Clarke has put down roots here, making his home year-round in a tiny town an hour north of Portland.
"He's a real outdoors guy," said Erasure's manager and agent, Michael Pagnotta. "A lot of people don't know that about Vince."
Small-town boy
Clarke left his home in suburban London four years ago to move to New York to be near his girlfriend, Tracy Hurley, who was a publicist working for the company that represented Erasure. They married and lived in New York for a couple of years but grew tired of the city. They had vacationed in Maine and decided to settle there, renting an apartment on the Portland waterfront for a year before buying their 20-year-old house just outside Damariscotta.
"I grew up in a small town. I lived in London for quite a few years, but I never really got on there either. I think you always carry with you that small-town mentality," Clarke says. "We were going to live farther up north, but then we had the baby, so it became a question of having to be near a hospital."
The baby. Clarke's devotion to his 18-month-old son, Oscar, drives many of his decisions these days and dominates his time and attention. "We just listened to the Wiggles, and every Sesame Street DVD out there," he says. "The great thing about having a boy is I get to have all the toys I wanted when I was a kid and couldn't afford, all the radio-controlled stuff."
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