“Prince Charles said to Curiosity Killed The Cat, ‘It’s these synthesizer things that are ruining music.’ We’d have said, ’No, you’re wrong.’” — Neil Tennant, Pet Shop Boys Versus America, 1993
Would we have expected the royal crusty to be anything less than distinctly unmodern though? Perhaps we’ll leave the now ‘King’ Charles III to his Barbra Streisand and The Three Degrees, his tin jug ears as hamstrung as those swollen sausage fingers.
Not only did Britain help pioneer electropop — making music constructed with these “synthesizer things” more commercial in a way the Germans struggled with — but the electronic exponents marking 45 years since their first appearance in the UK charts pretty much invented the synthesizer duo, pre-dating Soft Cell, Marc Almond and David Ball’s fellow Northern art project turned pop twosome by several months.
With that head of steam, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark would pave the way for Blancmange, Eurythmics, Yazoo, Tears For Fears, Erasure, Pet Shop Boys and scores more. (Case in point: when they became acquainted in 1981, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe bonded over two singles in particular – Soft Cell’s Bedsitter, and OMD’s Souvenir. Fine 45s in both cases.)
The post-punk era of the late 1970s saw a veritable explosion of surreal Scouse band names – The Teardrop Explodes, Echo And The Bunnymen, A Flock Of Seagulls and Dalek I Love You made contemporaries like China Crisis, Nightmares In Wax and Wah! Heat sound positively prosaic by comparison.
Would a band called Margaret Thatcher’s Afterbirth have had quite the same appeal, though?
When you’ve sold 40-odd million records, have helped invent an entire musical genre, influenced acts as diverse as (deep breath) Depeche Mode, Radiohead, LCD Soundsystem, Moby, the xx, the Divine Comedy, The Killers, Saint Etienne, Peter Bjorn and John, Elastica and Lady Gaga and garnered praise from peers such as Gary Numan, Karl Bartos, Phil Oakey, Peter Hook, Vince Clarke, Jim Kerr, Paul McCartney, Trevor Horn and Toyah Willcox I guess it’s a fair question.
Whenever you look back at that early eighties electronica boom, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (whose name was, understandably, abbreviated to OMD — aka Old Men in Drag, as some mothers were wont to say — always appeared to be slightly removed from the rest of their perceived contemporaries. They weren’t tied to any particular scene, there were no manifestos, no lopsided haircuts, no art-house parodying videos, and not a single frilly shirt or stroke of eyeliner to be seen.
McCluskey and Humphreys met in 1964 at Great Meols Primary School on the north coast of the Wirral peninsula, when it was still part of Cheshire county rather than the Merseyside of today. Inspired by a love of German Krautrock, the boys started writing songs in Humphreys’ mum’s backroom when they were 16.
But it took a meeting with Manchester musical impresario Tony Wilson, who’d initially dismissed them as “two hairy blokes from Wirral wittering on about electricity” at legendary Liverpool concert venue Eric’s to settle on a band name, albeit completely arbitrarily. As McCluskey, now 65, recalled in an interview with the Liverpool Echo in 2021.
“Eric’s was a weirdo art school thing. Very pretentious. Very crazy. Everyone was into Bowie and Roxy. We’d written some songs and said ‘can we come and play them the way they should be played?’ Tony said yes, but ‘what are you called?’ We didn’t have a name.
“My bedroom wall was like my diary, where I scribbled things, including future tracks. One was going to be called Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark. It was preposterous, but fitted the art school theme so we went with that. It was just as well because right underneath it was written Margaret Thatcher’s Afterbirth!”
Unabashedly mechanical, Humphreys and McCluskey singled out Kraftwerk as the primary influence on their music, but as The Scotsman newspaper once declared: “If Kraftwerk were the Elvis Presley of synth-pop, then Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark were its Beatles.”
It’s a view plenty share – and one that McCluskey still struggles to explain: “I thought we were experimental when we started. Unconsciously we had welded our synth sound to the pop of the glam rock we had been listening to and we started having hits.”
It’s also worth noting that when OMD, now newly signed to (no relation) Carol Wilson’s Dindisc label, first charted in February 1980 with Red Frame/White Light and its attendant eponymous LP, hogging the top of the UK’s singles and album charts were Kenny Rogers and The Shadows. Pretending to see the future? They were the future.
Some 14 studio albums and almost 50 singles later, OMD cheerily accept their title as “kings of the one-fingered melody”, insisting that their uncomplicated sonic approach is arguably their secret weapon. “The choruses on a lot of our singles were just keyboard lines, they weren’t sung,” Andy admits.
“Simplicity was our thing,” agrees Paul, who has also just turned 65. “Partly because we couldn’t really play very well.”
So, on Global Scouse Day, sit back and marvel at this Teutonic two-headed hydra as we assess a Perfect 10 of McCluskey and Humphreys OMD LPs.
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark and Organisation (1980)
It’s striking to think now in an era of albums-every-three-years, but OMD’s self titled debut and sophomore set were both issued in 1980 just eight months apart. They were literally bursting with ideas.
The duo’s debut certainly made a marked impression on the music industry upon its arrival, not to mention Philip Saville’s profit-swallowing die-cut ‘lozenges’ cover art, which seems to have invented much of Damien Hirst’s entire career.
When British synth music still belonged to painted pop weirdos like Gary Numan and the first iteration of the Human League, OMD set their soundscape template by offering obtuse arrangements and experimental instrumentation littered with pop friendly hooks and, unlike most of their peers, a live instrument component in the shape of drummer Malcolm Holmes and secondary keyboardist and occasional saxophonist Martin Cooper.
Feted by fellow wordsmiths Neil Tennant, Gary Kemp and Bono, lyrically the lads were scoping everything from nuclear war (Bunker Soldiers) to the local telephone box in Meols which temporarily served as OMD HQ (Red Frame/White Light), while Julia’s Song and The Misunderstanding were superior holdovers from precursor outfit The Id.
It’s numbers one and three in the list of OMD 45s that give the album its adventurous pop heft, though, with both seminal singles introducing what would become their oft-used trademark of hooky melodic synth breaks taking the place of sung choruses.
The ever exhilarating Electricity, coupled with the sparse, doleful Almost, was the single Vince Clarke cited as the reason he pursued a career in electronic music. While the melodic immediacy of Messages, with its sweeping insistency punctuated by recurring beeps repeating the sonic structure, was subsequently sampled by a ‘live’ Madonna but don’t hold that against it.
The swift follow-up Organisation builds on the avant-garde atmospherics with a moodier melancholy set; its gothic funereal tones owing much to Joy Division’s pathos-heavy Closer. With its haunting Eno-esque cha-cha beat, the stunning Statues even immortalised the shock of Ian Curtis’s suicide, while a perfunctory cover of the post-war chestnut The More I See You even seems to demonstrate Andy’s attempt at a Curtis-type larynx-lowering baritone, with considerably less success.
Though the obvious highlight is the sole single that, musically at least, has little in common with the noirish feel of the rest of the LP. And even that one was essentially about death and destruction.
Its iconic driving synth riff wrapped around serious subject matter pertaining to WWII (it’s named after the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima), Enola Gay manages to be both joyously danceable yet starkly heartbreaking. Indeed, not only did OMD create one of the most memorable intros in pop but one of the greatest 45s of any decade. Andy:
“When that drum machine kicks in it’s like being a Poker player knowing you have three aces and two kings. Sometimes we start gigs with it. Remember the TV programme It’s A Knockout? Jeux Sans Frontieres? It’s like playing your joker on that.”
So who was McCluskey having a dig at when he sarcastically announces Enola Gay as “a pop song” during their first in-concert video, 1981’s Live At The Theatre Royal Drury Lane? The answer may be be two-fold.
“Paul wasn’t a fan but that was largely down to the fact that it was the first single we’d released that wasn’t written by both of us – it was just myself. Our manager at the time threatened to resign if we released it. He thought we were experimental and Enola Gay was cheesy pop.”
Following Organisation’s release, the Sparks-ish Motion And Heart was re-recorded as a potential second single (it borderline cabaret with a deceptively jaunty piano riff, but it’s as commercially viable as Ali G’s ice cream glove), while the Human League-sque Promise features Humphreys’ first lead vocal and first solo composition on an OMD album, and there was plenty more to come.
Architecture & Morality (1981)
Their most revered album by a Meols mile, A&M was the perfect a distillation of everything OMD had learned with regards to song structure, atmosphere and texture, a sonic summation of their fondness for avant-garde experiments teamed with gorgeously ear worm melodies.
While the title was suggested by Peter Saville’s then squeeze — Martha Ladly of the Muffins, who’d been thumbing David Watkin’s book Morality And Architecture — the sonic impetus came when Andy and Paul received a selection of choir samples as payment for use of their Gramophone Suite studio from their former sessionist Dave Hughes, and came up with the idea of integrating them into their next project, which would be pulled together by Mike Howlett, producer for Punishment Of Luxury and China Crisis, among many others.
Excited by the juxtaposition of the emotional pull of the otherworldly choral voices against the machinations of the mechanical synths, a direction had been established. They would strike the perfect balance between experimentalism and commercial appeal (the ‘architecture’ of the album’s title is the sonic backdrop with the ‘morality’ coming from the monastical melodies).
From the neurotic six-string thrash of The New Stone Age (with its jagged post-punk guitars OMD, joked they wanted consumers to think the wrong record had been put in the sleeve, the wags) to the calmer closer The Beginning And The End, album No. 3 is an absolute emotional rollercoaster.
The sprawling Sealand puts Eno-esque atmospherics at the forefront before building to a minimal mantra-like vocal as the track approaches its Neu!-nodding conclusion, giving way to the exuberance of Georgia providing a jaunty Depeche Mode-like respite from the heavy melodrama.
She’s Leaving, a yearning homage to Sgt. Pepper’s She’s Leaving Home from some other Scouse beat combo, is another standout (and a small-scale fourth 45 in Benelux territories), while the first song recorded, Souvenir, was an elegiac choice as the trailer. Though Paul almost spoilt it by cringe dancing behind his keyboard on Top Of The Pops. A contrary architecture student at Liverpool University was taking notes of how not to appear so animated, despite the shared fondness for one-finger note-playing: “I can’t imagine my destination” he thought. Possibly.
A shimmering slice of synth-pop featuring Humphreys’ wistful triple-tracked lead fleshed out with choral samples acting as backing vocals, Souvenir stands as one of OMD’s finest moments and their joint highest charing single, making third position while Adam & The Ants’ Prince Charming occupied the top tier.
On a personal note, I remember vividly attending the obligatory Friday night disco at Springfield School in the centre of Milton Keynes that summer, and as I was hovering around the turntable set-up in what had been our assembly and sports hall, the resident DJ turned to me and thrust a seven-incher under my nose.
“Do you know what this is called?,” came the query.
The record had no obvious text, just a single line of smallprint that was impossible to read in a ‘club’ environment, and there was no further clues on the A-side label that the die-cut sleeve revealed either, just an argive image of cars driving past a cafe.
I did what anyone would have done and flipped the vinyl over. There was the legend, SCENESIDE A: SOUVENIR.
“It’s called Souvenir,” I proudly announced to the now acutely embarrassed disc spinner, though you wouldn’t have known it from the lyrics.
Fast-forward to 2009, and I was reminded of that formative episode when I surveyed the defiantly unofficial file-sharing site Limewire, looking for (ahem) surreptitious song access. I couldn’t help but chuckle when most of the OMD uploads had mislabeled the song My Feelings Still Remain. Indeed, it remains their Ground Control To Major Tom moment, because at least the next pair of synthesized history lessons included the titular Gallic martyr in both 45’s lyrics, even if the Wirral wonders still couldn’t bring themselves to come up with anything resembling a conventional chorus.
Expressing McCluskey’s aversion to straightforward lurve songs, Joan Of Arc and Maid Of Orleans (The Waltz Joan Of Arc) both lamented the French saint, their searing melodramatic anguish testament to OMD’s eclecticism, with the latter’s bagpipe-laden waltz sounding like it’s been beamed in by transistor radio proving particularly resonant.
The attendant artworks prove they’re as brilliantly conceptual as ever, too. On the second single they’re effectively credited as Orchestral Manoeuvres Joan Of Arc, though the second verse always makes me wince by paraphrasing a phrase my paternal grandmother was very fond of using when she wanted to lay down the law: “Now listen (to us) good, and listen well.”
And as for the third and final UK single (all three reached the top five, no mean feat), if I told you who the first person in our family was who owned an OMD recording you may be in for a surprise. Her son, my father brought home a two-volume compilation — an early example of BOGOF (buy one, get one free) called Action Trax in the spring of 1982. Compiled by ubiquitous budget specialists K-Tel and pressed near to us at CBS’s Aston Clinton plant in rural Buckinghamshire, it featured a cornucopia of classics from ABBA, Japan, Kim Wilde, Mobiles, Phil Lynott, Teardrop Explodes, the Human League, Ultravox, XTC et al that, due to the sheer number of times we collectively played the 30 tracks they remain some of my favourite 45s of the era.
Track eight, side one, nestled between Elvis Costello and Hall & Oates? That other time tunnel back to 1431 in the shape of Maid Of Orleans. A more stirring experience than its predecessor, eighties pop doesn’t come much epic than this, and the personal resonance is heightened by when I travelled to Normandy on my first trip to France a few weeks later, in the May of ’82, the city we visited on a day trip was the historic Norman capital where Jeanne d’Arc was tried and burned alive on 30 May 1431. We were literally a couple of days too soon for the anniversary.
And it seems fitting that when I finally managed to catch the newly reunited OMD live at Hammersmith in 2007, my abiding memory is of the almost deafening audience response to Enola Gay and Maid Of Orleans, the latter was so prolonged that Andy actually shook his head in amazement. But 28 years before, in the icy winter of 1981, when Architecture & Morality reached number three (this time it would be Prince Charming in long-playing form, plus Queen’s Greatest Hits, that would deny the ‘duo’ their closest attempt at a chart-topping studio album… until 2023.
Either way, OMD had established themselves as, well, the future by creating that odd commodity: a creative and commercially viable masterpiece that didn’t lose OMD any fans, which is more than you can say about the next entry.
Dazzle Ships (1983)
Far too weird for some, this one. But perfectly alternative and provocative for those like my senior schoolmate Paul Day, who played Radio Prague in his father Fred’s living room to us and seemed to ‘get’ what it was all about, way more than we did at the time. The term blindsided springs to mind. That also goes for OMD’s very own Paul Humphreys, too, who Andy McCluskey once told me—prior to their reformation—“I don’t think Paul’s ever forgiven me for Dazzle Ships.”
“Every year we’d visit American Forces Network in Germany,” McCluskey recalled to Saint Etienne’s Bob Stanley in a 2008 edition of the Guardian. “And we’d see the same guy every year when we went there to do an interview. So we gave him Dazzle Ships and he said, ‘Wow! Gee, what a weird album. Radio Prague? Let’s play it! They’ll think the commies have invaded!’”
Helmed by Rhett Davies (Robert Palmer, Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry & Roxy Music), Dazzle Ships has now been rightly recategorised, of course. It’s no longer the difficult fourth album that nearly killed OMD, but the one recognised as the kind of leap Radiohead would make with Kid A – that proves that beneath the chart veneer beat two hearts of experimental if eccentric gold.
The unexpected success of Architecture & Morality led both band and audience to foster raised expectations about next steps. Not an easy task for any act. Like much of Kraftwerk’s catalogue, Dazzle Ships is a musical statement that’s meant to be absorbed in order to truly get the feel of it, rather than to be simply listened to. It’s an album with a foreboding sense of paranoia that is also a perfect encapsulation of the Cold War eighties with war imagery and, most presciently, the dangers of technology.
Constructed largely from found sounds, Dazzle Ships contained collages of musique concrète: snippets of eastern European radio broadcasts, speaking clocks and white noise which gives the set its prickly backbone strategically placed between the melancholy synth-pop tunes interspersed throughout.
It alienated fans and critics alike, with coruscating first single Genetic Engineering’s frantic pace and nods to Kraftwerk’s Computer World failing to connect (though Paul Day miming to it at the Springfield disco clad in a collarless shirt remains a treasured memory).
Looking back, it’s hardly a shock the anti-evangelist but still somewhat annoying follow-up, Telegraph, failed to even make the top 40. Far lovelier, The Romance Of The Telescope is a beautiful if morose ballad, before segueing into the yearning New Order-ish Silent Running. Also of note, Radio Waves, with its the new wavey insistence, while This Is Helena even manages the impossible: a Kraftwerk versus Fab Four mutation that evokes the Beatlemania hysteria of the ‘swinging’ sixties.
Thankfully, many of the critics who lambasted Dazzle Ships for being too abstract and artsy now praise it for being what it was: a true work of innovation that has withstood the test of time and in its way, is no less influential and crucial to the burgeoning electronic genre as its predecessor.
“Quite frankly,” McCluskey recalled “we were doing what the bloody hell we felt like doing. We just thought, ‘Anything we do, doesn’t matter what we want to sing about – oil refineries, Catholic saints, aeroplanes that drop atom bombs, telephone boxes – we’ve obviously got some kind of Midas Touch.’ And after Architecture & Morality there was a little niggling thing in the back of my head that went, ‘Andrew, you know you’ve done awfully well. The world is listening to you now. Do you know what you haven’t done? You haven’t changed it. Just how effective is your art?’”
“You‘ve got to understand this: we were not pop musicians”, he continues. “We were conceptual artists in the form of a band. I know it sounds utterly preposterous and pretentious, but that is how we viewed ourselves. So I set out conceptually to make an album that there could be no questions about. ‘Listen to this! I’m changing your bloody world whether you want it or not!’”
“Of course, I went too far. Dazzle Ships was not wrapped in the candy coating of the melodies and the beauty. Nowadays we’re accustomed to samples and hard edits and mash-ups and all sorts of things being called music. Dazzle Ships was out there on a limb, and a lot of people didn’t get it. Architecture & Morality sold over three million. Dazzle Ships sold three hundred thousand. We lost 90% of our audience. That’s pretty fucking scary when you’re only 22 years old.”
Junk Culture (1984)
After the highly experimental, Andy and Pau decided to go full on pop and what were left with is an almost nerdy take on 1980s electronica, one where the rule book was well and truly thrown under a bus. (For reference, there are choice cuts about the Greek god Apollo and getting a tad too excited about trains but the one about the single decker from Meols to West Kirby is noticeably absent).
One of the defining traits of OMD was that many of their songs had instrumental recurring chorus structures. Not only did they have esoteric subject matter, but they eschewed the conventional Tin Pan Alley tradition of verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus. This was an aesthetic compromise more serious than junking their hitherto anti-image of two geeks in a toy shop, or their self-described “boring bank clerk image.”
The first single? The divisive chug-pop of The Locomotion. The unseasonably mild April week the track steamrollered its way into the charts at 28, Andrew Murray, the two Alisons and I were queueing up to see the live act three places higher in the countdown, Dead Or Alive (my first gig, in fact).
As we trundled in to Dunstable‘s Queensway Hall, with Andrew offering “hearing The Locomotion on the radio forced me to dig out my old OMD singles.” I think the inference being the age-old adage “the old stuff is the best” but no one extrapolated so I’ll never know for sure. Either way, the one about the choo-choo was certainly accessible in a corny, cheesy way. Restoring the band to the top 10, its nauseating cheerfulness anticipates the trashy aesthetic of the Stock Aitken Waterman-dominated charts to come — and even sports a brass arrangement by Bowie’s then wonder-in-the-wilderness Tony Visconti — but there were better songs on the album.
New producer Brian Tench (Belle Stars, Bow Wow Wow) was in the driver’s seat, and for an act that had just received a commercial drubbing with Dazzle Ships, opening Junk Culture with an eponymous dubby instrumental was a ballsy move, and demonstrated that there was still some recalcitrance left in these old nerds yet. Though the less said about the one that sound like Haircut One Hundred meets The Beat attempting Kid Creole & the Coconuts rejects the better (the calypso effort All Wrapped Up, which Visconti also had a hand in. Having come from working with Modern Romance it shows, painfully).
OMD had clearly been influenced by recording at George Martin’s AIR Studios in Monserrat (the title track sounds like a Grace Jones leftover), though whether that was for tax purposes or they just fancied some of Duran Duran’s sun, sea and sand action is unclear. Either way, they weren’t about to cavort in pastels on huge elephants and even huger yachts just yet.
Talking Loud And Clear, the enchanting, musicbox-like set-closer and second 45 is arguably the most rewarding of the Junk Culture singles, an out and out romantic paean to contrast with the “hate songs” that fill the second side.
Though the third single was arguably the bright spot on side one. Tesla Girls, with its stutteringly au courant vocal strap-line “tes-tes-t-t-t-t-tes” (very 1984), showed that the lads could write an upbeat dancepop number while imbuing it with obscurist touches that only they could provide. I mean, only OMD would invoke Nikola Tesla in a song about how they were helplessly in thrall to lurve.
Never Turn Away was a windswept ballad in the style of early New Order or even (ta-dah!) OMD. Its austere cascading synth hook acts as the chorus, making the fourth and final 45 a throwback to the band’s early style. It’s breathtakingly beautiful, though hardly radio-friendly, a point a certain Neil Tennant, then assistant editor of Smash Hits, picked up on.
In a now notorious reviews page dated 8 November 1984, the future Pet Shop Boy not only manages to trash Andy and Paul’s single (“plain old boring“) but also contemporaneous offerings from ABC, Art Of Noise, Culture Club, Dead Or Alive, Eurythmics, and Gary Numan, the jester. Sadly, the public seemed to agree and NTA would have the distinction of being the lowest charting OMD single of the eighties.
Crush (1985)
OMD went back to their roots for album number six, recording in Liverpool’s Amazon Studios just as the very midpoint of the ’80s beckoned. With Crush, the one-time synth nerds made a slick and slightly unexciting pop album for the masses (OK, you can call it the American market), which is all the more ironic considering it was issued a month before Live Aid, the epochal global landmark ‘concert of the decade’ to which they weren’t invited.
Often panned as hollow and derivative, this panoply of polished pop isn’t entirely sell-out sweepings though. There’s still some hints of character and atmosphere but much of it is generic blandness, where once pioneering soundscapes are reduced to watered down and easy-to-digest synth cheese.
It’s probably not fair to blame the latest guy wearing the producer’s cap — British by-way-of Maine mixologist Stephen Hague — not when he was responsible for helming West End Girls just months later (go figure) in the same studio he mixed Crush in (Advision in London’s West End) . But it does sound like the brief was to make a generic pop album and OMD were above that. Or so we thought.
Anyone looking for signs of OMD’s original aesthetic had to settle for the cheeky Joan Of Arc rejig La Femme Accident, an evocative bus ride sing-along, the third single and arguably the LP’s most interesting moment, and I don’t say that because I live in France.
So In Love and Secret, the first pair of 45s (the latter’s sleeve presenting the band as a four-piece for the only time), are more in keeping with Crush’s lightweight synthpop, where McCluskey and Humphreys have forgone the influence of Ultravox and Kraftwerk and inspired by the transatlantic success of the likes of Howard Jones and the Thompson Twins decided they ought to be part of the so-called second British Invasion.
From a commercial standpoint the move paid off, breaking the band into the Billboard charts on the strength of those lead singles. Switching horses midstream allowed the band to cultivate a new audience, but also invited the imputation that by 1985 OMD were playing catch-up rather than capturing the zeitgeist. A creative conundrum that would reach its zenith with their next non-album single.
The Pacific Age (1986)
As seventh album The Pacific Age was being recorded, a fabulous case of commercial catch-up occurred: If You Leave — written very hurriedly for the final scene of teen prom-com Pretty In Pink — gave OMD their first American top 10 hit the same May ’86 week West End Girls was the US No. 1 for a newer pop duo, this being a time when over half the Billboard charts were British.
While Tom Lord-Alge produced what is still the band’s biggest US success (and a veritable double-edged sword, if ever there was one), Stephen Hague was brought back for his second OMD album. The Pacific Age was a continuation of the glossy, bombastic pop of Crush.
With its over-dominant drums and female bvs, show-setter Stay (The Black Rose And The Universal Wheel) is practically a pastiche of Reflex era Duran while Dead Girls and the title track are cynically derivative of instrumentation that had been done so much better previously.
Along with Goddess Of Love, second and third singles We Love You and Shame are innocuous slices of Americanised style over substance, but it’s a style that plays to OMD’s mastery of melody and mood. The biggest hit (Forever) Live And Die is the obvious highlight, an excellent first 45 and whenever I hear it I’m instantly transported back to my final family holiday.
This would have been the last week of August 1986, and while Pat Phoenix (Corrie’s legendary street siren Elsie Tanner) was on her deathbed, the four of us were ensconced in a large static caravan on a very hilly field in Beer, Devon. As per his summer job, the BBC’s Peter Powell was hosting the Radio 1 Roadshow and casually admitted on air he’d not been impressed by recent OMD output though he opined FL&D was “a wonderful return to form.”
Sadly its own creators thought less of the whole project, with both Humphreys and McCluskey speaking negatively about The Pacific Age, with Paul describing it as their “musical nadir” in the 2014 book Mad World: An Oral History Of New Wave Artists And Songs That Defined The 1980s.
Burnt out, creatively spent and feeling they had compromised themselves for something that hadn’t succeeded on all levels, it marked the beginning of the end… for almost two decades, at least. As an album closer, Watch Us Fall could not have been more apt: Paul Humphreys and The Other Two quit after a 1988 tour supporting Depeche Mode, who were now playing stadia across America while one of their primary influences were imploding.
History Of Modern (2010)
English Electric (2013)
The Punishment Of Luxury (2017)
Bauhaus Staircase (2023)
Yes, I’m painfully aware I’ve slightly overwritten on the six core 1980s OMD LPs (5,000 words and counting, gulp) so I’ll keep the postscript mercifully brief. Released in 1988 as the ‘carrot’ for shifting the band’s first Best Of, Dreaming was a fine 45 to go out on, despite the overbearing oh-so-80s drums.
Alas, McCluskey decided to revive the brand and bought the OMD name from his fellow founder, who, ironically, had more of a moral claim to the name by setting up The Listening Pool with Mal Holmes and Martin Cooper, ie everyone from the ‘final’ iteration of OMD bar Andy.
The trio of ‘solo’ OMD albums — Sugar Tax (1991), Liberator (1993), and Universal (1996) were a mixed bag, from the opportunist Walking On The Milky Way cribbing All The Young Dudes when Oasis were doing it on a daily basis, to the Barry White homage Dream Of Me (Based On Love’s Theme), McCluskey veered between predictable pastiche and increasingly lightweight sub-SAW fare that even Sinitta would have baulked at.
It was hardly a surprise then, when, in 1996, he junked the brand name in favour of masterminding Scouse girl group Atomic Kitten. At least the Pet Shop Boys-ish Pandora’s Box was an undeniable premier pop choon. Just don’t mention Domino Dancing.
After a rapprochement that resulted in some tentative prom dates across Germany in 2006, 2007 saw a full-scale ‘classic line-up’ reunion tour based around Architecture & Morality, which then led to the inevitable discussions about new material.
It’s slightly alarming when you look at the discography and realise A&P have been together in their second wind for twice as long as they managed in their first. Across the four long-players they went back to first principles and renewed their predilection for pretentious titles, surrealist Peter Saville artwork and textured subject matter derived from science, industry, and technology.
My only complaint is there’s not a single Paul lead vocal on two of those four LPs. I realise Andy’s the bossy boots of the group, but I guess Mr Humphreys is free enough to not crave the limelight in the same way. Oh well.
Highlights? The heart of English Electric is the seven-and-a-half minute Metroland, a wistful ode to the future that owes a debt to Kraftwerk’s Europe Endless. It’s as progressive as Andy and Paul will ever get, which is all the more contradictory when, in a curious reversal of their ’80s trajectory, every one of their 21st century albums seems to be more rewarding than its predecessor, culminating in what has been spoken of as OMD’s very final swan song, Bauhaus Staircase.
It’s a marvellous, layered work that bears many repeated listenings…
Slow Train starts and stomps, powered by a gliding electro-glam machine (strict? Well, McCluskey admits he was “channeling my inner Alison Goldfrapp”; while Anthropocene shines with an intense and neon-lit fluorescence that evokes Electric-era PSB channelling Visage’s Fade To Grey. It’s that good.
Steve Pafford
OMD’s Andy McCluskey reviews Lily Allen’s Sheezus is here
