First Single from reunited OMD

Unfortunately, it's not what I'd hoped it would be but truthfully pretty much what I expected.

[www.dailymotion.com]



Post Edited (08-13-10 16:21)

Thanks for the link, Mr. Reno.

I thought it wasn't too bad, certainly no worse than anything McCluskey did on his own (although "Dream of Me (Based on Love's Theme)" from Liberator still works for me in a major way). I liked the choral background vocals throughout, but thought it might go somewhere more interesting on several occasions...

Anyway, this is probably more John Hughes/Pacific Age OMD than Organisation or Architecture and Morality OMD, but you can tell that they're actually trying to get back to sounding like themselves...at least that's my take.

So, fellow TP message boarders, your assessment?

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So, fellow TP message boarders, your assessment?

Gets up off couch ... staggers into the kitchen.
Grabs plate of uncooked beef livers from top shelf.
Staggers back into the living room.
Wastes the rest of the night tossing raw liver at the wall *SLAP* and watching it slowly slide down the wall until it falls *PLOP* onto the baseboard.

...

The scenario is not pretty. I recognize this.

...

But it makes more sense to me than wondering about a reunited OMD. I own one 12" single by them and I cannot remember the title. And I am not getting up from the liver and blood-stained couch to go find out.

Sorry. You asked.

Meh. Kind of has a strangely dated '80s feel. But, hey, it's the commercial single, so maybe the album's deep cuts will have some of their old brilliance.

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I have to admit that I'm intrigued by Dazzle Ships. Any album that inspires equal parts utter loathing and devotion usually has something interesting going on.

I pretty much agree with the TP entry: a handful of brilliant songs, lots of not-too-successful experiments. Kinda like Kraftwerk's "Radioactivity," in that sense. I don't love it or hate it.

Really, any TP-er owes it to themselves to check out "Architecture and Moralilty" - "masterpiece" is not a word I uses loosely, but if any techno-pop album qualifies for this description, this is it.

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Testicle Removers with a Fart

And, lo, another band name is born!

In regards to the new single, this particular song just feels to me like a single in search of the closing credits of a John Hughes movie. While it's not surprising that McCluskey & Humphries would take the opportunity to remind the world that they were once a popular band, I'd hoped they would instead use it to remind the world that they were once an important one. But as Fab says, maybe there's some better stuff lurking in the deep cuts.

I've often aired my grievances about how the combination of MTV and John Hughes ended up damaging the legacies of a lot of great bands that did important work during the post-punk era - Simple Minds, Big Country, Psychedelic Furs, Thomas Dolby, to name a few. These were all people that at one time were on the cutting edge but now are recalled through the filters of goofy videos, Molly Ringwald and one-hit-wonderdom.

It's always struck me as especially unfair in the case of OMD. At the time of their first four albums, they were held in as high regard as any other band working in post-punk, and rightly so. Those first four albums form a catalog as worthy of reverence as any other band of the era, and yes, I'm looking at you, Joy Division and PiL. OMD are often dismissed as synth-pop, but that glosses over the fact they were never a completely synth-driven band. Their foundation was nearly always a flesh and blood drummer and McCluskey's propulsive bass work, and there was always a hefty amount of sonic experimentation leveling out the pop.

It's not a coincidence that their first single was produced by Martin Hannett and released on Factory, nor that they were the band with the closest working relationship with artist Peter Saville besides Joy Division. They had more in common with the Factory label than they ever did with the Silicon Teens.

They combined Krautrock, musique concrete, and the DIY aesthetic of punk with a keen melodic sense and a worldview that embraced technology at the same time it critiqued it - early OMD always seemed aware that the same technological advances that made them possible were more than likely the technological advances that were going to eventually make continued human existence impossible.

The opening track on their first album lays out their original worldview in a nutshell. Musically, "Bunker Soldiers" is a perky, almost goofy, dance track while lyrically, it's all about the misery of being cannon fodder. Isn't it wonderful that mankind is smart enough to have developed the ability to deliver death from miles away without getting their hands dirty? Not so much if you're the poor bastard on the receiving end of things, still made of the same fragile flesh and blood as your ancestors and forced to live in a hole in the ground like an animal to keep from being blown to bits by advances in science.

The rest of OMD's first four albums explore the nooks and crannies of that vision. A handful of men piloting a heavier than air machine vaporize an entire city in the blink of an eye. Harnessing electricity makes the modern world possible while the production of it makes the modern world increasingly unlivable. A crazy teenage girl who hears voices from God is used as a symbol in one of the earliest propaganda campaigns, then is set on fire as soon as her usefulness is over. Sometimes the only way to deal with the world is to drop out of society, commandeer an old fort in the middle of the ocean and declare yourself a sovereign nation.

OMD's original vision reached its ultimate distillation on Dazzle Ships. Surveying the history of science and technology from Galileo's telescope through the telegraph and radio communications and set against the backdrop of the Cold War where two competing worldviews were just looking for an excuse to wipe the other out, OMD found humanity at a crossroads where it had advanced enough to tamper with its own elemental biology and rendered itself increasingly irrelevant through automation yet human nature itself had not fundamentally changed. All the advances science ever made ultimately just makes it possible for mankind to fuck itself over even more efficiently than ever.

It's all heady stuff, delivered with a variety of tone and technique - songs like "Enola Gay," "Georgia," "Telegraph" and "Electricity" are on the surface shiny pop tracks but all have a bitter center; "The Messerschmitt Twins," "Second Thoughts" and "Of All the Things We've Made" are ghostly and ethereal, while "The New Stone Age" and "Genetic Engineering" are noisy, frantic and not a little disturbing. Meanwhile, there are musique concrete digressions sprinkled all over the place, from the loony "Dancing" to the sedate yet somehow ominous "Architecture and Morality" to the actually very moving "Time Zones."

After Dazzle Ships, OMD's attitude seemed to become "fuck it, let's dance," which led them down the path to where they are now most likely to be remembered as what's playing in the air as Molly Ringwald runs off with Andrew McCarthy and John Cryer is forced to console himself with Kristy Swanson (poor guy). (Though Junk Culture at least retains enough of the sonic shenanigans of the earlier albums to deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as them.) But in their prime, they were as impressive and important as the more revered bands of the era, and the reissue of their first four albums in recent years seemed to be finally reminding people of that. Which makes it all the more of a shame if they use their reunion to remind people of Pretty in Pink instead.



Post Edited (08-15-10 10:50)

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"... they are now most likely to be remembered as what's playing in the air as Molly Ringwald runs off with Andrew McCarthy and John Cryer is forced to console himself with Kristy Swanson (poor guy).

I can barely even remember them for that.

...

breno, I doff my cap to you for the excellent piece of writing. Well-written apologetics still have the benefit of being well-written. It fell short of prompting a reassessment of my own opinion regarding the band, but it did cause me to stop throwing raw organ meat at the wall long enough to go find out exactly what 12" single I own by OMD. It's called "We Love You." I guess at one point it made sense to have something like that around in case Molly Ringwald or Mary Stuart Masterson ever popped in to ... see my etchings.

Given such a cozy, feel-good message from the past, who could continue to think bad thoughts about a band? OMD are off the hook. Instead, I'll switch to sticking hat pins into my Jim Kerr voodoo doll. It looks quite like him.

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a shame if they use their reunion to remind people of Pretty in Pink

It's like that scene in All The President's Men when Hal Holbrook urges our heroes to "follow the money."

...

Odd that while some bands crossed The John Hughes Event Horizon (Cute Band Name Alert!) and were sucked into eternal association with whatever Hughes movie they'd lent a tune to, others avoided that gruesome fate. I always have to remind myself that The Jesus & Mary Chain were indeed on the soundtrack of a John Hughes production. Too bad the song wasn't "Head." There is a yet-to-be-filmed movie scene involving a subway station disaster that the end of that tune would fit like a glove.

And The March Violets? They're nearly forgotten. Just the barest memory of a video floating around in my memory. Can't recall the tune to save my life.

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Odd that while some bands crossed The John Hughes Event Horizon (Cute Band Name Alert!) and were sucked into eternal association with whatever Hughes movie they'd lent a tune to

Echo and the Bunnymen and New Order also both survived the Hughes exposure, but mainly because their songs weren't the featured singles.

Another band that got dragged down by Hughes exposure was Yello. Prior to Ferris Bueller, they were considered pretty much the avantist of the garde, after Ferris Bueller, even your grandma liked that "Oh Yeah" song.

All of which would lead one to think that I have a major axe to grind with the late Mr. Hughes, which I really don't. I like his big four teen movies just fine (16 Candles, Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller) and even like Some Kind of Wonderful because Mary Stuart Masterson was never cuter, and in reality, all the bands dragged down by association with him - OMD, Simple Minds, P Furs, Yello - were well on their way to blanding themselves out with no help from Hughes. He just made them more famous when they did so.

And besides, I'll always be grateful to him for this:

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And besides, I'll always be grateful to him for this:

Typically, I have no patience for reruns. But you know ... that loop just gets better and better (and better) every time I see it.

:::cues up "We Love You" by OMD:::

Actually March Violets had been around for awhile before Some Kind of Wonderful as a Goth band (they even had a release on Sisters Of Mercy's Merciful Release label if I remember correctly), best known for "Snake Dance". Of course they changed a couple of members (mainly the singers) and went for the golden ring. Alas, the flash didn't last long. (Flesh For Lulu's flash burned a little longer - "I Go Crazy" in SKOW, "Postcards from Paradise" - but not by much).
Of course there are those who barely registered a flicker even with John Hughes's "help" (Blue Room or Apartments, anyone?)

Oh yeah, OMD. Early-mid period stuff good/inventive, some decent-if-mersh stuff later ("Secrets", "We Love You") and then they totally fell off the radar. Unable to play the new track at the moment but the words "with a contemporary shot in the arm" doesn't quite fill me with hope.

Dig the cover:

[www.designboom.com]

A nod to Architecture & Morality, design-wise.

Rolling Stone is streaming another new OMD track

[www.rollingstone.com]

which is decent enough for what it is, but what it is is by the numbers dance pop with a few interesting textures and sounds tossed in to remind you that the creators were once innovative and creative but not so much anymore.

It's been established that I'm a fan of Kylie Minogue, and I'm fine with Kylie Minogue sounding like OMD on "All the Lovers". However, I'm not fine with OMD sounding like Kylie Minogue, which is what they do here.

So, what do you think of the album?

The music is very good on some tracks, the lyrics pretty brainless and banal on all, and Andy McCluskey keeps lapsing occasionally into the bizarre notion that he's some sort of Soul Man, when in fact he's possibly the whitest man in the history of recorded music.

Overall, it's very disappointing compared to OMD's first four albums, but reasonably okay when compared to Crush and The Pacific Age. McCluskey and Humphreys demonstrate often enough that together they seem to be able to conjure up sounds no other band has ever quite gotten right to make me grudgingly accept it, though the ratio of crap to quality is high enough to make it a painful acceptance.

As I said earlier, in light of the recent critical rediscovery and re-evaluation of Dazzle Ships and the fact that McCluskey & Humphreys were working together again and even brought Peter Saville back into the fold, I'd hoped they were going into this with something to prove and would want to demonstrate that they weren't just the 80s fluff band most people in the US consider them to be. The fact that they ultimately seem to be content to use the opportunity to just reinforce that misconception about their own work is a bite on the ass.

The fact that the track getting the most attention is a tacked-on mash up of "Messages" with an Aretha Franklin tune speaks volumes. OMD can combine two unrelated songs as pointlessly as any doof with the proper software on their laptop. Hurrah!

I concur, pretty much.

I have no idea who/what Black Light Oddysey is, but their remix of "If You Want It" is preferable to anything on the album:

[stereogum.com]

Admittedly, part of my problem with OMD is my aversion to synth-pop in general. But I liked the melodies enough to give the new one another chance.

Brad, an eloquent defense of a band that certainly has unexplored layers. "Architecture and Morality" is where it all begins and ends for me with OMD. (That title track taps into my love of early Faust and some of La Monte Young's work.) This is only because of my lack of exploration through the OMD canon. . . But I can still put on "A & M" and be taken on a nice ride. It's dated well, IMO. I'll have to revisit "Dazzle Ships."

What movie has some guy crying over not getting Molly Ringwald and settling for Kristy Swanson? I saw most of those horrible 1980's films and can't recall it. Sixteen Candles? Is that the one with the exchange student from China? If I did see it, booze must have killed those brain cells in which I had those memories.

EDIT: I looked it up on the Wikipedia. Pretty In Pink. I'm sure I saw it, but cannot recall it. The one with the exchange student was Sixteen Candles, another turkey. I'm sure lots of Americans in my age range (I'm 40) have fond memories of those films, but I am not one of those Americans.



Post Edited (11-16-10 22:52)

I just want to echo some of the others here and say that was a damn fine read. Not familiar with the catalog to render an opinion, otherwise.

Shortly after The Breakfast Club came out, a friend was riding in my car and she saw that I had a Simple Minds cassette and she gushed "I love Simple Minds! Let's listen to this."

It was Reel to Real Cacophony. I considered warning her before I popped it in the deck that Simple Minds had gone through a few changes since that album, but figured what the hell. My friend was horrified, to say the least, and by the end of the second song insisted we listen to the radio instead. Frankly, I was surprised she held out that long.

But I just listened to that album again Saturday for the first time in years, and was reminded how weird (and great) it was.

I liked that Skittles commercial.

Okay, that was a great job Brad.

I've been an OMD fan since I first saw/heard "Enola Gay" on URGH! A Music War at some point in the early '80s. They're among the select few (probably more like 20 to 30 but who's counting) whose work I have redundant copies of, B-sides included.

For decades, I've felt they are dismissed too frequently, but I'd lapsed into failing to mount a defense on their behalf, because–as they so often say–you can't disprove a negative...wait, that doesn't apply here at all, does it?

I've heard the whole record. I've never really been an OMD fan, but for synth pop, it's not bad. Good melodies. Nothing as overweeningly awful as "If You Leave" but nothing as fetching as "Enola Gay," either. And those two songs are pretty much the sum total of my OMD experience, so I can't judge this album in the context of their other work.

Edit: I have to admit that I'm intrigued by Dazzle Ships. Any album that inspires equal parts utter loathing and devotion usually has something interesting going on.



Post Edited (08-14-10 11:45)

There was a cro-magnon-ish heavy metalhead in my high school (called Gonzo) in the mid 1980s who really latched onto OMD as being representative of all that he despised. He called them Testicle Removers with a Fart. I thought that it was crass but creative.

For years, I never knew who sang the closing song in Sixteen Candles. I eventually found out. I still think "If You Were Here" is the best thing The Thompson Twins ever did, but I'm not sure if that's that big of an achievement or not.

Anyway, I find the whole discussion of cutesy MTV videos and John Hughes movies ruining the credibility of certain bands fascinating. The rings no truer than the case of Simple Minds. We have to remember, though, that the band PURPOSELY went down the commercial path...would Hughes have ever featured a song like "Thirty Frames a Second" or "Factory" in his films? I think not. Kerr also defends "Don't You Forget About Me" to this day, and they play it at every live gig...right after "Sweat in Bullet" if I'm not mistaken. What a difference five years made for those guys.

The dull so-called mashup sounds more like an Aretha remix with some OMD samples thrown in. Maybe they should have let "any doof with the proper software" do it, it'd have more humor and imagination.

Still, any hype for OMD is fine by me - it might lead a few souls to stuff like "Architecture & Morality."

Pitchfork's two cents today:

"Unfortunately History of Modern won't be conquering anything except maybe the already primed nostalgia circuit. After a long layoff, OMD have made the kind of the just-okay, just-what-you'd expect album that's always snagged by the handful of folks hungry for anything new by their Big 1980s faves. Think of all those middling Tears for Fears and Erasure "reunion" albums that feel mostly like announcements that their creators aren't quite dead yet: Someone's got to be buying them, despite the fact that they rarely match (let alone top) the originals. So it goes with History of Modern."

Sounds really lukewarm.

That Pitchfork comment is just plain stupid, at least in regard to Tears for Fears. They had a grand total of ONE reunion album six years ago...and it was pretty good.

I agree. I just wanted one more excuse to look at this:

Agreed on the Tears for Fears thing. And not to split hairs or anything, but Erasure's never had a "reunion" album because they've never broken up.

Thanks for the J.C.

Yeah, that last "middling Tears for Fears reunion album" was the best thing released under their name since Songs From the Big Chair. I wish they'd put out more such reminders that they aren't quite dead yet.

I saw Tears for Fears in August, and while it wasn't the production one associates with the Seeds of Love shows, they acquitted themselves quite well, and they even played 7 or 8 songs off Everybody Loves a Happy Ending, their middling "reunion" album from 2004.

They did perform one song from post-"break-up"/pre-"reunion" albums Elemental and Raoul & the Kings of Spain–1993's "Break It Down Again"...