The Human League – Romantic?

Lovely album. Probably my fifth favourite of theirs after the first four. Critics trot out the tired cliched criticism of 'dated' - as if everyone wants the trendiest hippest thing. 'Dated' means it belongs to a time - belonging, and belonging to a time past is a beautiful thing. Hence the 2500 or so people who own this album and bothered to catalogue it.

"Romantic?" should have been a return to form - "Heart Like a Wheel" that announced the comeback already sounded like johnny-come-lately in the year 1990, still it had all the perfect ingredients of the group's spot-on hit work (after all, it was Martin Rushent who worked on this particular song). Secondly, judging from the production team the group joined forces with at the time, "Romantic?" really should have delivered - alongside Rushent, there's Mark Brydon, Robert Gordon, William Orbit and Bob Kraushaar but sadly, with "Kiss the Future" (a promising title though), the shot on the very front cover was immediately evident of a group so tired and desperate for creative recovery.

With the MKII-era line-up long gone, the core-trio maintained some of its image consistency, but the aforementioned opening song with its cheesy horns and trendy beat of the day, immediately reflected the forced sound of "Crash". Somewhere between Jam & Lewis and LA Reid & Babyface, "Kiss the Future" would have passed for any newcomer's attempt at imitating the likes of Bobby Brown...

But there's still mediocre-to-the-core to come - "Let's Get Together Again" is arranged in the worst of the Eurosong fashion, a cheap electro-contender that would have ended up with zero points regardless. And just when we thought it couldn't get any sadder, along comes "Soundtrack to a Generation". After exposure to this particular song, one cannot help but wondering why the album didn't bear the title "Ironic?". "Get It Right This Time" is actually rather good a song that would have fitted in better with "Hysteria" (instead of "Don't You Know I Want You") or the "Electric Dreams" soundtrack album - however, on a 1990 album it sounded ever so hopelessly dated (additionally, it very much resembled "Love on the Run" from 1986), despite Martin Rushent's involvement. "Men Are Dreamers" only added to the landslide, a dull and utterly forgettable ballad, where Oakey & Co. were emulating the worst of the omnipresent fifth-rate mainstream pop formula.

Some of the songs did get a grip on the League's post-1981 successes; "The Stars Are Going Out" showed some promise, as did "Rebound" - this one is actually the second strongest to "Heart Like a Wheel", slightly darker in tone, radiant with the League's well-known synth-pop charm; both "Heart Like a Wheel" and "Rebound" were cleverly coupled for the single release - and as such, these two remain the only material from "Romantic?", worth repeated listening. The rest equals a painfully rhetorical question in the album's title.

Compared to much of their back catalog, 'Romantic?' is worse than mediocre. On it's own, "Heart Like A Wheel" serves as the album's saving grace. For completists only.