For an electronic pop duo who started out wanting to be both Karl Stockhausen and Abba, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark haven’t done too badly.
For starters, after 45 years as a (mostly) functioning music act, with 40 million record sales and (between 1980 and 1998) 18 UK top 40 hits, Andy McCluskey and Paul Humpreys haven’t succumbed to performing on the nostalgia-festival circuit.
These Liverpool synth-pop machines have engineered the latter part of their career to make them the band you need to listen to should you ever tire of Kraftwerk. This is no small claim; many tracks on Bauhaus Staircase (which McCluskey has implied could be OMD’s final album) interweave the kind of glorious synth swirls pioneered by the Düsseldorf fab four.
However, the band’s quirks make OMD quite distinct from their influences – amid the dystopian electronics are bouncy pop melodies that gave the likes of Atomic Kitten (the Liverpool group that McClusky cofounded and co-wrote for) successful careers.
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Songs such as Where We Started, Don’t Go, Look at You Now, Kleptocracy, Aphrodite’s Favourite Child and the title track deliver a radiant motorik/pop hybrid (with pointed politically slanted lyrics) that it’s impossible not to whistle along to as you play air synthesisers in the privacy of your home.
