#163
April 20 1984
Orchestral Manouevers in the Dark
Junk Culture
3.5 out of 5
Highlights:
Junk Culture
Hard Day
Talking Loud and Clear
Wow, get me some molly and put me in a room with 1000 other people with glow sticks in their mouths. The main single, “Tesla Girls” show off their prowess and, weirdly, their affection for…Sparks? On it’s own, it’s fine. In comparison to…Sparks? It actually pales. Imagine deciding that mid-80s Sparks is the direction you decide to take your band a year out of an experimental journey (read:disappointment) and only a few away from your masterwork. “I’d cross every ocean for the sake of locomotion but I wouldn’t have a notion how to save my soul”. Geez. Go find a Kemp brother to help you, guys.
On songs like “Apollo” and “Love & Violence” & “White Trash” you can hear the struggle the band is having fighting against their avant-garde instincts and forcing commerciality. Then they give over completely to the lushness of their keys with “Never Turn Away”…They aren’t Haircut 100 but now they are trying to live in a world between that and the OMD of the past.Too bad. But hey, a synth-band gotta synth, man.
I like it the most when they seem to be honestly trying to say something, like on “Hard Day” or the upbeat tropical dance track, “All Wrapped Up”. Mediocre tracks, to be sure, but someone’s having fun making them, I think. They save their best for last, “Talking Loud and Clear” is a nice little piece of confection. Wish there was more of that...
Where Art of Noise found cohesion in the disparate sounds and styles, OMD just sounds desperate.
https://open.spotify.com/album/0N7pzbMU9fDaQaRVpX4oei?si=sO3kzFStR6iSfcThDjNkgw
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