Pretending to see the future
In 1988 my parents bought a CD player. Thinking back, it wasn’t quite the ‘white heat of technology’ even then. I swear the lights dimmed when it was turned on, and it probably needed bolting to the hifi stand when the tray went in or out. As part of this investment in all things audio, my father got himself hooked up with Britannia Music Club. (think of it as some sort of mail order Mafia, a collective you could never ever leave, even when dead). The shiny ‘free introductory CDs’ probably helped sweeten the deal. Sweeping aside the regulation Brothers in Arms disc, I found this.
In 1988, OMD was a new and exciting world for me, albeit vaguely familiar through earlier childhood. I played the crap out of this CD. I bored everyone to death with it. Everyone. “Ohh, listen to that bit!”. “Ohhh choirs!”. “Niiiice”. Even typing this I’m boring myself. They became my first proper musical passion, right as their Best Of had been released. Back then, a greatest hits album meant the related band were on their way out / about to wind up in court over some internal nastiness..and how right that was. Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys (along with Mal Holmes and Martin Cooper) musically divorced each other as official newsletter promises of new stuff went unfulfilled. In the meantime I’d religiously bought every single album, knew every song intimately, would wear out lovingly-compiled C90 tapes containing all the best bits.
At a rather crappy point in my life during early 1991, SOTSS and Sugar Tax came along as a happy distraction. I mentally spun with glee as McCluskey and his rag-tag bunch of session musos would turn up on Pebble Mill, The O-Zone or Wogan, pushing (admittedly an non great Gary Glitter-esque single) to number 3 in the UK and putting the Wirral firmly back on the popular shelves of Our Price. The album was very decent and thankfully almost contemporary. Naturally, the two follow-ups dropped in quality and the public’s fickle interest lapsed as they realised that a tinkly melody atop clattery rhythms and a over-used choir preset didn’t make for a continuing strong raft of sales. In short; 1990s OMD went from ‘really good’ to ‘ok’, as McCluskey lost direction and wrote songs for people ten years older than the chart-swaying public. ‘Universal’ saw Humphreys partially return to the fold, but by then it was all too late.
Meanwhile, musically, I moved on in the usual and expected ways. I discovered ambient, IDM, music with real geetars and drums, music with no chance of coming anywhere near a chart run-down. To me, OMD are like the archetypal dusty cassette in the back of the cupboard. They’ve barely featured in the true Big Moments of my late 20s and early to mid 30s. Boards of Canada, New Order and Aphex Twin took those moments. And yet, a bunch of years and reunion gigs later, we’re on the cusp of seeing the first OMD-proper album since 1986′s ‘The Pacific Age’ – an album which indicated their wheezing, dying gasps of their ability to work together. ‘The History Of Modern’ is expected to be released in the late summer of 2010.
This time we’ll be devoid of the Weir Bros brass section (no bad thing). But – and here’s where it gets frustrating – we’re promised the ‘best album we’ve done since Architecture & Morality’. Please don’t make those promises. Please don’t set the expectations that high. How about just releasing something and letting us decide?
I worry about hating this. I’ve been able to ignore the ‘Sister Marie Says’ demo, mainly because it’s so McCluskey cliched it’s understandable why it may not surface at all in its current form. In a way, I’ve been waiting for 24 years for this. And even though my musical tastes have moved on, there’s a bit of me that won’t let go of this band completely. I really want it to be good, and to be popular, and to be admired. For this album, we’ve been waiting, looking skyward. So please McCluskey, Humphreys, Cooper and Holmes; don’t let it be shit?
