Send "Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Album Review Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark History of Modern [100% / Bright Antenna; 2010] 5.0 Find it at: Insound | eMusic History of Modern is being released at the most synth-heavy time for popular music since the days when OMD first blew up. In America they did it via Pretty in Pink with a less art-rock and more palatably pop version of the sound that is popular now-- the sound that made them stars in the UK. You might think it's the perfect time for the band to stage an improbable comeback, to once again take their original synth-disco sound all the way. Hey, if 43-year-old house producer David Guetta can transform himself into a Billboard star, anything's possible, right? 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. Not that delivering what your aging audience expects is such a bad thing, especially when your attempts to move beyond those expectations can be kind of embarrassing. No one's "rock" should try to imitate the cranky, grit-less late Jesus and Mary Chain or Primal Scream's limpest electro-sleaze, though "New Babies; New Toys" sounds like OMD thinks both bands were onto something. And while their dance-pop songs, like "The Future, the Past, and Forever After", might yet make it onto the playlists of your less-discerning gay clubs, their thin Hi-NRG pastiches would be eaten alive on the radio, where today's meat-wearing bad romancers have made big beats and instant-earworm choruses a requirement. If your kids abuse you with The Fame Monster on the way to school, don't think counter-programming History of Modern is going to help you seem down....full text |
| Bbc |
| In the late 70s OMD were early synthesizer adopters and pop musicians with a serious avant-garde bent, who were looking to Kraftwerk and Harmonia for inspiration before most people had even got to grips with punk. This combined with a warm-hearted, Liverpudlian melodic sensibility saw them turn out four great albums, two of which (Architecture & Morality and Dazzle Ships) were touched with genius. Like other bands to emerge from the post-punk era, such as Simple Minds, they came to a perceived crossroads and elected to take the route marked Top of the Pops, not realising – and why would they? – just how much the acid house revolution was going to change the future of electronic music. And, like Simple Minds, this fateful course change was taken after their inclusion on a John Hughes movie soundtrack. Their first studio album in 14 years, and 11th overall, starts off with New Babies: New Toys which tries to place them back at this point, given that it sounds like a slightly electro-punk take on 1986’s If You Leave, the theme song to Pretty in Pink. What follows is, to put it politely, pretty much awful. The Future, The Past, and Forever After, from its unnecessary Oxford coma onwards, is just plain unacceptable. It’s obviously supposed to be a hymn to modernism which declares that the future is unstoppable, like an arrow or speeding train "on wheels of steel". Fair enough, but despite playing their ace card (dressing Kraftwerk up in smart new clothes and sending them down the disco) they fall flat on their faces. The electronically synthesised Doppler effect of cars rushing along the autobahn alone would have sounded cheesy in 1982. This album does nothing to alter the notion that OMD have only travelled in the wrong direction since Dazzle Ships and, post Atomic Kitten, Andy McCluskey’s songwriting ability seems to have slipped down to the standard of My Lovely Horse from Father Ted. There is one redeeming moment here, and it comes right at the end. Perhaps unsurprisingly they’re at their best when behaving like it’s 1982, performing a respectful and TOTP-friendly tribute to their German masters. The Right Side? is a genuinely lovely track and bears many replays, even if it is a little too similar to Kraftwerk’s Europe Endless from Trans-Europe Express for it to go without comment....full text |
| Popmatters |
| Over the past few years, OMD have really set the table for a smashing comeback. First came the well-received reunion shows, featuring the band’s “classic” four-piece lineup performing their classic material. Then came the concerts with symphony orchestras and an art installation with famed graphic designer Peter Saville. Throughout all this, the band realized their music, particularly their more experimental early ‘80s material, had undergone a critical revival. In their native UK especially, the lasting impression of OMD had been of the band that sold its creative soul to the USA with “If You Leave”, then teased with a smash pop album, Sugar Tax, before fading into irrevocable irrelevance and disappearing. Over the intervening years, though, albums like Architecture & Morality and Dazzle Ships were dug up and appreciated for the beautiful, haunting, influential pop art they always were. The inevitable re-issues of these albums were very well-received. OMD have done their best to present History of Modern as a de-facto follow-up to Architecture & Morality and Dazzle Ships. Months before its release, all the signifiers were in place. The classic lineup of leaders Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys along with old hands Martin Cooper and Malcolm Holmes, back in the studio for the first time since 1988. The willfully pretentious album title, and two songs with the same name. The iconographic, Saville-designed sleeve, treated as an event on par with the release of the album itself. Now for the hard part. It seemed natural, taken for granted, really, that History of Modern would at the very least sound like classic-era OMD. But wait a minute. McCluskey, who helmed OMD alone during the ‘90s and does the bulk of the songwriting here, has always been ambivalent about the band’s modest commercial success. As OMD-influenced Depeche Mode conquered the world, McCluskey had to make do with a few British hits and the odd European success. Prior to the band’s reforming, he claimed he regretted Dazzle Ships’ being so experimental. He wanted another massive hit like Architecture & Morality had been. However good or lousy they were, McCluskeys’s trio of ‘90s OMD albums were nothing if not unabashedly commercial. On History of Modern, you can hear OMD trying to straddle the line between the artful moodiness longtime fans have been led to expect, and the pop sensibilities that might grab some airplay. It’s like the band have created a pretty-good “classic”-sounding OMD album and then injected it with a bunch of random detritus that was lying around McCluskey’s flat. There’s enough here to warrant the inevitable “best album since…” claims, for sure. McCluskey gets out all his frustrations on “New Babies: New Toys”, a scathing attack on the ready-made music industry, complete with fuzz guitar, pounding drums, and a satisfying burst of energy and confidence. Throughout the album, his nasally voice remains a singular, emotive instrument....full text |
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