Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
English Electric, the second new album by O.M.D. since their reformation starts with a warning that the anticipated future has been cancelled; possibly prophetic, a wild but reasonable claim and somehow justified by the pairing of Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys in this demure and laidback recording.
In recent years some of their cohorts from the 1980s electronic music bonanza that swept through the decade like a broom demolishing the last vestiges of punk and trying to clear a suitable path against the resurgence of 80s Progressive and Heavy Rock/Metal, have once more released albums that have sounded fresh and interesting. Bands such as Blancmange and Human League have created a stir and O.M.D. has joined in once again.
The future seems so long ago but seeing as everything has a present and trends come round as intrinsically predictable, then to have O.M.D., one of the 80s greats back and giving songs a polished and recognisable performance on the new album can only be a good thing. Full of positivity and more than a healthy nod to their past, tracks such as Helen of Troy, the forewarning of The Future Will be Silent, the dystopia and frustrating feel of the rhythmic Decimal and heart wrenching aura of Dresden make English Electric perhaps O.M.D.’s finest moment since Architecture and Morality.
For anyone who has caught the band in the last couple of years as they have toured extensively, not just in Britain and certainly the sublime night when they went back to their past and performed at Eric’s, they will have already realised that Andy McCluskey has still got that incredible voice that makes listening to the band soothing and yet with the element of foreboding that the lyrics are suggesting something much deeper and possibly bleaker than the listener can hope to cope with.
Instead of talking about the day that America dropped the nuclear bomb on Japan from the Enola Gay, the listener is introduced to the imagery of a seemingly perfect world, where everything can be ordered and fitted to suit their lifestyle, that lifestyle comes with a stark reminder that the future, Like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, comes with a price.
Imaginative and catchy, English Electric is exactly what O.M.D. stand for.
Ian D. Hall