To understand what a joyful revelation OMD was Friday night at the Music Box in Hollywood — the English synth-pop outfit’s first full-blown L.A. performance in nearly 23 years, since opening for Depeche Mode at the Rose Bowl in June ’88 — it would help to first recount its relatively rapid rise and fall stateside. And forgive the self-indulgence, but it’s hard to do so impartially; I can’t help but view it all through my own prism.
Though my headphones were clogged in the early ’80s by unlikely complements of Iron Maiden and the Clash, Rush and the Ramones, I instantly loved most of the British synth groups that emerged during that era. In retrospect, New Order, mutating out of Joy Division following Ian Curtis’ suicide, and the formative Depeche Mode seemed like future titans from the start, with Gary “Cars” Numan paving the way into the mainstream. But there were scores more inspired by Bowie, Eno and especially Kraftwerk that cropped up in 1980-83.
Yaz, former Depeche dude Vince Clarke’s short-lived duo with Alison Moyet (known as Yazoo at home), was among the best overall, but plenty of other sullen-looking lads with nutty haircuts and Fairlight gear delivered albums that were deeper than any chart-invading MTV-amplified novelties suggested, from Soft Cell and the Human League to Thomas Dolby and A Flock of Seagulls, whose ’82 debut is far better than that much-mocked totem “I Ran (So Far Away).” (For argument’s sake, let’s leave Duran Duran and ABC, estimable groups whose early albums are essentials, in the New Romantic subgenre with Spandau Ballet, since those groups’ sounds quickly grew more guitar-oriented.)
Then there was Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, one of the daftest monikers in pop history, who sprang off the Wirral Peninsula, across the Mersey River from Liverpool.
They had no salable image to speak of — apart from Dolby, they were the nerdiest of the bunch — but they had a proto-electro feel that was fresh, lively, at times moodily dark like Side 2 of Low yet more often came laced with unabashedly cheerful melodies, even when the material was bittersweet.
OMD was formed after some trial and error in other bands by lifelong school chums Andy McCluskey (primarily on bass and vocals) and Paul Humphreys (mainly keyboards and the occasional lead vocal). They penned their first song, the kinetic “Electricity,” in 1976; three years later, before New Order and Depeche Mode would surface, they managed to get it released as a single on Factory Records, at that time a hub of music that mattered thanks largely to Joy Division’s staggering premiere, Unknown Pleasures.
Yet only the staunchest import-hounds on this side of the Atlantic heard any of OMD’s exceptional first four albums (including 1981’s crucial third disc Architecture & Morality) as they were actually being released. Nascent modern-rock radio outlets were mildly smitten with the infectious melancholy of “Enola Gay,” inspired by the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. But it wasn’t until A&M issued Junk Culture in ’84, led by irresistible singles “Tesla Girls” and “Locomotion,” that New Wave Nation, still burgeoning in the U.S., really took notice of McCluskey & Humphrey’s chipper tunes.
That’s what I mean about a rapid rise and fall, because from there things quickly peaked commercially and then bottomed out for OMD. McCluskey spoke frankly of the shift Friday night at the first of two sold-out shows at the former Fonda Theatre: “Once upon a time we were a cool synthesizer band from England that only got played on KROQ. Then we sold our souls to Hollywood.”
Indeed, Crush, from ’85, yielded the falsetto sweetness of “So in Love,” the group’s first of only four Top 40 hits, and was soon followed by the Pretty in Pink-related smash “If You Leave,” which rose to No. 4 and was utterly inescapable throughout the summer of ’86. By then, seemingly every once-edgy bit of shrapnel that pierced the landscape after the post-punk explosion had wound up dabbling in mainstream polish, even brooding ensembles like the Cure, Echo & the Bunnymen and Siouxsie and the Banshees.
But a schism began in ’84-’85 that by the time of “If You Leave” was widening into an us-vs.-them gulf. On that side: everyone who still liked Wham! and Howard Jones and Falco’s “Rock Me Amadeus.” On our side: people who had discovered true alternative music, be it SST bands like the Minutemen, Hüsker Dü and Meat Puppets or new college-rock mainstays like R.E.M., the Replacements and the Smiths.
To us, synth-pop was a nearly dead concept. New Order was the exception to every rule, Depeche would always have its merits, and the wit and wile of Pet Shop Boys made for an unnerving arrival that would prove worthy of best-ever praise. But the rest just had to go.
And OMD was among the first tossed out, largely because the group — including Martin Cooper on keyboards and saxophone and drummer Malcolm Holmes — had undergone such a u-turn transformation, forsaking its idiosyncrasies in favor of diving headlong into commercialism.
Those first fans grumbled and split after being subjected to McCluskey whining through “If You Leave” a thousand times. Not surprisingly, sales dropped off dramatically after 1986’s The Pacific Age, and the true OMD disintegrated not long after that Rose Bowl appearance with DM; Humphreys was apparently as disenchanted with the group’s direction as die-hards were.
McCluskey carried on for a time under the same banner, maintaining interest at home and on U.S. dance charts until the mid-’90s. Yet by the time he threw in the towel with 1998’s excellent overview The OMD Singles — “This will be the last OMD album,” he said in the liner notes, noting that after 20 years “it feels like the right time to bring down the curtain” — I gather most Yanks looked upon the band as little more than a footnote: a cult favorite at best, an also-ran at worst.
Obviously such a misunderstanding of OMD’s lasting popularity, to say nothing of the durability of its richly detailed work, sets a person up for an eye-opening encounter. But I don’t think even hardcore fans expected something as remarkable as this exuberant Hollywood show.
Fully honed from three years of touring in the U.K. and across Europe, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark has finally returned here in magnificent form, brilliantly reclaiming its position in the pantheon of pioneering electronic artists. It was a simply terrific experience, among the most fun I’ve had at a concert in years.
Certainly it was more rousing than 2008’s admittedly wonderful Yaz reunion shows. By comparison, Moyet and Clarke’s warm android pop felt as skeletal as it ever was, whereas OMD’s synthetic pleasures came in all manner of guises. Slightly industrial to start (via “New Babies: New Toys,” from last year’s History of Modern), they then spanned from bounce-inducing dance ebullience (“Tesla Girls”) to symphonic grandeur (especially during the end of “Maid of Orleans,” capping an amazing run begun by “Souvenir” and “Joan of Arc”). Surrounding that were deft rhythmic shifts like the climbing melody of “(Forever) Live and Die” and the ballad “Walking on the Milky Way,” their own “All the Young Dudes.”
“I apologize to the die-hards if we’re playing it a bit safe tonight,” McCluskey said, albeit before launching into the evening’s sole lesser-known track, “Radio Waves,” from 1983’s wrongly neglected Dazzle Ships. I suppose playing 15 of 18 cuts from The OMD Singles — plus five from History of Modern, the first work from the original lineup in two decades – does add up to a rote setlist. But the quartet was right to go with the obvious. I’m sure some Pitchforkers may have come away miffed at not hearing more deep-catalog material, but after so long away most fans tend to want to hear standard stuff above all.
Given how the packed crowd chanted along to that touch-you-once-touch-you-twice tune, this clearly wasn’t a too-hip-for-everything L.A. bunch demanding Organisation B-sides. They wanted nostalgia of the heartiest kind.
And what power there was to this memory trip! Everything I knew of OMD suggested this would be a fey, stiff performance. Who could have guessed McCluskey, gangly but compelling like Gang of Four’s Jon King or Midnight Oil’s Peter Garrett, would be capable of pumping up a crowd with the hollered ferocity of Dave Gahan? Who’d have imagined so many ditties derided as fluffy fodder would instead sound so soulful, even wistful, as played by guys now in their 50s? Who’d have thought they’d pack as much sonic potency as fabled New Order? And who might have bet that McCluskey could still belt the bejesus out of that last high note in “If You Leave”?
Just stunning, all of it, even the final stretch that the frontman dubbed “mindless nonstop dancing.” McCluskey, Humphreys and the more subdued Holmes and Cooper were justified in at times basking in the happiness and adulation. These are first-rate talents with chops (it takes finessed skill to play staccato bass so well, just compare Adam Clayton to Mark Hoppus), an enduringly unique sound and a memorable songbook, boasting several staples — “If You Leave” near the top of the list, I must admit — that are paradigms of popcraft.
My only complaint is that their reappearance was woefully underbooked — they easily could have filled the Wiltern, and I wish they’d be a surprise last-minute addition to Coachella, because they would blow people away (and probably shame Big Audio Dynamite). Not in my wildest nightmares did my 16-year-old self ever think he’d eagerly say this at 41, but I sincerely hope this isn’t the last I’ve seen of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark.
Setlist: Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark at the Music Box, March 25, 2011
Main set: New Babies: New Toys / Messages / Tesla Girls / Radio Waves / History of Modern (Part 1) / (Forever) Live and Die / If You Leave / Souvenir / Joan of Arc / Maid of Orleans / New Holy Ground / Green / Talking Loud and Clear / So in Love / Sister Marie Says / Locomotion / Dreaming / Sailing on the Seven Seas / Enola Gay
Encore: Walking on the Milky Way / Electricity
Photos, from OMD’s show earlier this month at NYC’s Terminal 5, by Cory Schwartz, Getty Images.
