omd

New single by ORCHESTRAL MANOUVRES IN THE DARK:

OMD/BAUHAUS STARCAISE

Sebas E. Alonso

The new life for OMD continues with good albums and new hits. Only Taylor Swift is going to stop them from achieving the first UK album number 1 of their entire career this week. The authors of legendary records from the 80s and songs as recognisable as 'Enola Gay' or 'Electricity' have continued for some years now in duo format -Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys- with such satisfactory results that they even considered disbanding after their 2017 album, 'The Punishment of Luxury', because for them it meant "retiring at the top". Now they say that this new work, 'Bauhaus Staircase', would be a good epitaph if it were their last, and they are right.

Bauhaus Staircase' is defined as Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark's most political album. The single 'Bauhaus Staircase' sets out to "tear down fascist art". Further still, 'Kleptocracy' proclaims that "no matter who you voted for, they've already bought the man you elected", amid quotes from "stolen money", Deutsche Bank, the Kremlin, the KGB and "all the Saudi money in Central Park".

There are more neutral and ambiguous songs, seemingly simply about love or life, but also striking are two spoken word tracks about birth and death ('Evolution of Species') and overpopulation ('Anthropocene').

The latter is a story about the number of inhabitants on Earth in different eras and - WARNING, SPOILER - ends with the planet destroyed and a total of zero inhabitants, in a reflection on climate change. This excuse is used by OMD to end their new album in a totally beautiful way, with a ballad about death like 'Healing'. It would indeed be very poetic if it were the last song on their latest album -if it is at all-, as the lyrics begin "You will never die your death / But will you ever learn to live".

All this wouldn't be worth so much if OMD had lost their panache, but that's not the case either. I thought they were swinging at the idea that they were going to sound like ABBA on this album, but the melody of 'Look At You Now' speaks for itself. Slow Train', on the other hand, is reminiscent of the more art pop era of glam geniuses like David Bowie. This track takes you straight back to 1980 or to Goldfrapp's recreation of those times on 'Black Cherry' (there was a cut called 'Train' exactly). And they don't disappoint when they sound like themselves either, like on 'Don't Go' with those synthesizers that are joie de vivre itself, or on 'G.E.M.'. They won't fill stadiums like Depeche Mode, nor will they have the cult following of Pet Shop Boys, but I'd swear they're in a better creative state than both of them.

https://jenesaispop.com/2023/1…/omd-bauhaus-staircase-2/