Orchestral Manouevres in the Dark - Organisation
#414
by Craig Fitzgerald
October 24 1980
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
Organisation
Genre: Cold Wave
Allen’s Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Craig’s Rating: 3 out of 5
Highlights:
Enola Gay
Stanlow
It’s hard to take your own personal preferences out when you’re writing one of these reviews. This record, for example, is exactly the kind of music that had me running into the arms of Joey Ramone and Brian Setzer.
I do still loathe this dial-up modem sound, and the sophomore year EN201 poetry overlaying it. I cringe at its monotony and lack of things I generally listen to music to hear, such as a bridge and a chorus.
But: This is not a record produced by TV popularity contest. It’s about as DIY as you can get, featuring the absolute minimum of instrumentation (although this is the record where the band hired a drummer instead of making do with a tape machine), and I grudgingly have to appreciate that.
It has its moments. “Enola Gay” is a good song and despite its bleak lyrics about the eponymous B-29, it’s a bright, snappy song that qualified as a hit in 1980.
The rest of the record is grim machine music for European teen boys (or those who wanted to be European teen boys) who hate their parents. The only other track that really stood out for me is — oddly — the MOST grim song on the record, “Stanlow.” As I listened to it, I thought it would be a good soundtrack to an early Terry Gilliam film. As it turns out, it’s about an oil refinery, so I wasn’t far off.
Of course, six years into the future, OMD would dump all this solemnity for an Astley-esque earworm, packed full of the song components that they so studiously avoided in this record.
https://open.spotify.com/album/3bouQtY9H1DP39yxqHuFf8?si=IfksBe8DT-e50CsUh4TlFA
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