Entertainment For Lively Minds
Your views on new OMD album
Firstly - what a great album sleeve. The presence of Peter Saville was one of the key reasons in me buying this on CD (I never buy CDs these days)..
Musically - a mixed bag - there are a handful of tunes that have the raw atmosphere of their early stuff (New Babies:New Toys, New Holy Ground and The Right Side?).
But is it me or does far too much of the album have the sound of the 90s era OMD? Interviews with the band have promised an updating of their 80s sound for the 21st century but to these ears some of it is closer to mid-90s dance pop and for all the sleeve's intellectual pretensions, the lyrics are largely the kind of lovey-dovey nonsense that Mcluskey might have tossed off to Atomic Kitten. Still there are some good tunes in there??
What say (the invariably small section of) the massive (who are still listening)?
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'Tossed off to Atomic Kitten'?
ooer, missus, etc.
I dunno
I'm listening to old 70s Supertramp on Acnify™ thanks to some telly ad for... can't remember I just knew the Supertramp tune
Hmm
like you i was interested by the talk of a return to early 80s omd. But having read that a few of the songs were old songs written for Atomic Kitten, and talk that Paul Humphreys contribution was minimal, made me fear the worse.
Have heard a few tracks now, and can't say that i'm blown away, it all does sound like 'locomotion' era omd, which is most certainly not a good thing. Oh well, back to 'Architecture and Morality' and 'Dazzle Ships' then
To my shame...
I didn't even know that there was a new OMD album out there.
Not sure whether to invest in it - I certainly don't want to buy an album full of "If You Leave"-type songs. I want bleak landscapes and reassuring industrial noises.
Statues
off of Organisation, too bleak.
After all these years whenever I try to play it, a total bummer descends, and I have to turn it off.
I like the 'pop' era OMD.
Find their earlier stuff harder to get on with.
But tunes rejected by Atomic Kitten... Doesn't sound all that promising.
Didn't know it was out... Will investigate.
At first couple of listens
actually, it's not too bad. This was mostly in the car en route home tonight. There's a fairly nice mix of the older era OMD and the poppy stuff. Sister Marie Says has faint overtones of Enola Gay, and both parts of History of Modern and New Babies: New Toys are pretty decent. The rest have yet to register properly but that's not to say they won't.
It's not a nailed-on classic, but it's rather better than you'd have right to expect for a 30-odd year-old band. I quite like it.
PS: Speaking of electronica, PMSL at this moth's Viz which, seemingly randomly has "The Victorian Jean Michel Jarre Story"
Had a quick listen
and came to similar conclusion about it being a bit Atomic Kitten cast offs/90s OMD
I did see them live a couple of years back, and they were tremendous, played most of A&M very loud with loads of bass and followed by nearly all the hits.
This is still my favourite song about a Cheshire Oil Refinery:
Stanlow - one of their finest
I also love Sealand from Architecture and Morality - brilliantly atmospheric
New Holy Ground on the new album includes a clunking machine noise much like that used on Stanlow. The noise (and pretty much the whole melody from New Holy Ground) also made an appearance on ace mid-80s b-side, The Avenue.
History of Modern too long
I must say I totally agree with Walker182 about too much of the new OMD album sounding like 90s era OMD. For me, the only songs that work as old style OMD with a modern twist are New Babies : New Toys, both History of Modern, RFWK, New Holy Ground, Sister Marie Says and The Right Side. Sometimes, The Future, The Past, and Forever After and Pulse are cringy attempts at contemporary dance music. The vinyl scratching and wailing diva vocals on Sometimes are awful. The lyrics on The Future, The Past, and Forever After are embarrassing and the breathy moans on the 90's Madonna sounding groove, Pulse, are also cring inducing! These songs are just so out of place on both this album and also in today's electronic music climate. For me, this is what lets this album down. Didn't need to be a 13 song album.
The cover. *swoon*
I love early OMD so much, but can't be doing with anything after Junk Culture.
I bought the new one with a mixture of anticipation and dread, but still bought it nonetheless. 1-0 to them I guess.
The first track reminds me of The New Stone Age from A&M, which filled me with joy, but it did go downhill a lot after that. The Right Side is quite good.
Your first point is very well made though, the cover is ace.