OMG! New OMD!

To say that I’ve been keen on Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark lately would be a serious understatement. The band was one of the most amazing of the 1980s, delivering well crafted synthpop that was both uplifting and thought-provoking.

It is then nothing short of delightful that the original duo behind OMD have reunited, with Andy McCluskey and Paul Humprheys set to release a new album, appropriately titled History of Modern, in 2010. The two have been touring the United Kingdom and have even made a demo of a song available to fans from their Web site at www.omd.uk.com.

The song itself, “Sister Marie Says,” brings back the snappy synth rythyms of classic OMD songs, demonstrating the talent behind the decks still remains strong. I’m less than taken by the lyrical quality, however, but that would be a huge hurdle for me as I have a strong disdain for the overuse of overt religious imagery in media. The song is an overly ponderous reflection on what if the religious dogma of a nun are correct and what if those of the singer, an apparent non-believer, are wrong. Not exactly thrilling but perhaps reflective of a trend toward religious themes in synthpop, particularly in the late 1990s to early 2000s.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m totally excited about the album. This particular song may have to grow on me a little bit. After all, I’m a big fan of “Hymn” by Ultravox.

Meanwhile, however, McCluskey has been everywhere, eloquently describing the rise of New Wave synthpop (without directly calling it New Romanticism) in the terrific documentary Synth Britannia and casting misguided aspersions on new synthpop acts like La Roux, calling the band “a woman warbling over an old Depeche Mode record.” Someone with McCluskey’s talent and eloquence should do more to embrace the new generation of bands following in his footsteps, no?

Two Generations of Synthpop

Good news from the BBC on collaborations between Gary Numan and Little Boots and Heaven 17 and La Roux!

Heavenly Live Combos

It does make me happy to see a new set of synthpop acts not only become so successful but to give great respect to the pioneers in the field who made the music happen!

Little Boots already collaborated with Phil Oakey of the Human League on her debut album, by the way, with the excellent track “Symmetry.”

How Do You Dare Step into My Flame?

I am totally excited that Duran Duran are reissuing a 2-disc remastering of the album So Red the Rose by Arcadia!

It’s due in the United States and Europe in February 2010.

Arcadia, of course, was the brilliant side project formed in 1985 by Nick Rhodes, Simon Lebon and Roger Taylor while John Taylor and Andy Taylor were away in the Power Station.

The first disc contains the original nine tracks on the original album as well as seven bonus tracks! The bonus tracks come from the soundtrack for the movie Playing for Keeps as well as the extended singles of “Election Day,” “Goodbye Is Forever,” “The Promise” and “The Flame.”

The second disc has mixes of those four singles as well as “Rose Arcana” and “Say the Word.”

The package also contains a DVD, which has videos for “Election Day,” “The Promise,” “Goodbye Is Forever,” “The Flame,” and “Missing” as well as films on the making of them.

The Arcadia project issued some completely wonderful New Romantic songs. The band’s sole album long has suffered from being underrated even by music enthusiasts who recognize its value. I personally always felt Nick and Simon should have revisited music in the vein of Arcadia in the 1990s after the Duran Duran Wedding Album, when they became the only two original members of the band to carry on recording and performing.

All the same, this is great news and a worthy addition to the music collection.

Kim Gordon

Growing up a fan of early Madonna and Debbie Harry in Blondie, I gained a deep appreciation for the female aesthetic in my pop/rock music. Throughout the 80’s Belinda Carlisle fueled that taste quite a bit as well, but Belinda always played to being the earnest pop star.

Debbie, in particular, had a very appealing come-what-may detachment from her singing oftentimes, which lent the New Wave Blondie songs a very punk appeal. When Debbie sang, she sometimes didn’t care if you found her sexy or angry or meaningful–she was just going to sing. The video appearances where she gazes glassily into the distance during her performances adds a layer to what I mean. She’s out there (perhaps quite literally at times) and she doesn’t care if you are along for the ride.

So the female vocals then have become one of the most exciting aspects of recently discovering Sonic Youth via my friend Michael (catch him DJ’ing Fists of Fury the second Wednesday of the month at the Rock and Roll Hotel in DC). I’m one of the last people to know that Sonic Youth consists of the core husband-and-wife team of Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon. But Gordon’s detached yet feminine vocal delivery continues the tradition found in those wonderful Blondie songs. She manages to add an extra punk veneer to the already eclectic yet melodic post-punk stylings of her band.

A great example occurs in the latest Sonic Youth album I purchased–Washing Machine. I’m skeptical that I would ever find anyone who would say it’s their favorite Sonic Youth album but fans cannot help but to enjoy it immensely due to entries like the title track. In lesser hands, the song could come across as an odd attempt to compare a date to a laundry cycle. But Gordon’s vocals add the appropriate feel to the song, painting an urban landscape with her whimsical yet hardened delivery.

Devo and the American New Wave

Putting aside Devo’s eccentricities for the moment, the gents from Akron, Ohio, chart a pretty good arc into New Wave music for an American band.

Seized with anger over typical punk themes ranging from broken politics to broken promises to broken hearts, Devo struck out in the traditionally blue-collar state of Ohio as a punk band for the art set, putting philosophical meanderings and literary allusions into a jumpy, frenetic repertoire dominated by guitars.

But as Devo’s range grew, they so fully embraced synthesizers so that by the time of their third album Freedom of Choice, they were creating some great American New Wave music. Devo came around to the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC, for two nights in a row Sunday and Monday. Sunday, they performed their first album in its entirety plus encores and the like. Monday, they performed their amazingly catchy third album in its entirety.

The concert performance was tremendous and fully demonstrated why these songs withstand the test of time so well. Devo kicked off the concert with “Girl U Want,” following the album’s tracklist, and the crowd was already in a very good mood, dancing up a storm, and singing along by the time of the trademark “Whip It” as the third song.

The show, in my opinion, reached a crescendo with “Freedom of Choice” and “Gates of Steel”-two quintessential Devo songs that make for terrific dance numbers. Hearing those numbers live really brought home the dynamic and the energy and the message for me and really made the show.

My only real complaint is that a self-indulgent encore of “Beautiful World” went on for way too long due in part to a meandering and oddly backhanded tribute to Michael Jackson, of all things.

They made up for it in part by closing with a very Devoesque cover of Johnny Rivers’ “Secret Agent Man.”

As an aside, we here at Secret Circuits always will continue to differentiate between American New Wave and, in particular, UK New Wave as separate subgenres of New Wave music. American New Wave, although surely pop music, reaches for rock sensibilities a lot more than UK New Wave, which tilted heavily toward synthpop.

The New Romantics (3CD)

Having chatted about New Romanticism a bit lately, I was going to save a discussion of this compilation disc for a little later. However, I have a philosophical disagreement with a friend of mine, wherein she would tie musical genres to flash-in-the-pan moments of when their popularity was at its height, while I would extend them through the entirety of their context within musical history–preferring to see them as living and growing still.

Recall my argument earlier over whether “punk is dead.” No, it’s not. It is only if you close your ears to it.

Music historians have a consensus that the roots of New Romanticism were alive in glam and progressive rock in the early 70’s and that the height of the genre carried through to 1985, where Live Aid sort of served as the last party that everyone could afford to attend.

New Romanticism, as a music genre, is still out there today. I’m sorry that the Blitz Club isn’t around anymore, but the genre grew way beyond that.

Anyway, EMI last month released a three-CD compilation called The New Romantics, which has been embraced by Steve Strange. The first disc starts out with Strange’s own band Visage and it’s number one hit “Fade to Grey.”

The first disc continues with selections largely from 1980, the year the movement crystallized around its demi-god, David Bowie, who appears on the compilation with “Ashes to Ashes.” Also having set the sound and trends of the music as far back as 1973, Roxy Music too have become fully enveloped in the fashion with their appearance on the compilation with “More Than This” from their extraordinary 1982 album Avalon.

Disc 2 starts out familiar enough with Gary Numan and his bolt-from-the-blue hit “Are Friends Electric” but then veers into more expansive territory with the inclusion of the Thompson Twins in the genre. The 1983 song “Love on Your Side” does not alone herald the extension of New Romanticism beyond when the party-going public at large were all dressed like pirates but it’s not alone here or in time.

In 1984, Dead or Alive released “You Spin Me Right Round,” the bombastic dance hit that refuses to die, and it too is included here for good reason. Singer Pete Burns and his androgynous look with synth hooks so catchy that the backbeat to the song is perhaps the most recognizable in the world.

In 1985, Human League frontman Phil Oakey, whose voice first provided a stark and deep companion to the electronic beats of what would become commercial synthpop and thus New Romanticism, teamed up with disco producer Giorgio Moroder to make the album named after them with the top song “Together in Electric Dreams,” which also appears on the compilation.

Disc 3 gets into the slightly more eccentric stuff and potentially songs that aren’t even properly here in my opinion. It’s all well and good to include “Warm Leatherette” by The Normal (aka Daniel Miller) but Brian Eno and David Byrne’s “The Jezebel Spirit” off their first collaboration album strikes a discordant and not very ethereal nor dancey tone. Sparks’ “No. 1 Song in Heaven” seems entirely appropriate somehow although Sparks covered so much ground in their career that their own collaborations with Moroder seem almost like an accident.

It is also entirely appropriate that the compilation wrap up with several songs that include “I’ll Tumble 4 You” by the Culture Club, who kept the sonic imprint of New Romanticism alive throughout much of the 1980s with their success in the United States.

See a full tracklisting of the compilation album

Early Madonna: Excellent Garage Pop

The first two Madonna albums are perfectly lovely garage pop.

Coming out of New York City in the early ’80s, Madonna struck upon a time when a robust dance scene melded the best New Wave and disco influences. She could pull from them all as she set about turning the music industry on its ear.

Madonna’s big influence for New Wave hooks in low-fi, high-dance pop music came from Debbie Harry and Blondie, who had called it quits with their album The Hunter a year before Madonna released her self-titled debut in 1983. Reggie Lucas produced that album but renowned DJ John “Jellybean” Benitez wowed the dance floor with his production on “Holiday” and his remixing elsewhere.

The second album really takes the sounds of the first to another level, thanks largely to the production work of Nile Rodgers of CHIC, who had produced perhaps the most amazing pop album of all time–David Bowie’s Last Dance–at this point.

For years, my favorite song off Like A Virgin was “Material Girl,” but even during that time, I couldn’t help but think of “Dress You Up” whenever the album came up. The combination of the New Wave synth and the funky guitar played by Rodgers himself makes the song an incredibly irresistible classic.

Producers today could take some lessons from Rodgers and stop overproducing crap to the point where it is nothing more than a collection of shrill bells and whistles. Instead, you could arrange actual instruments in such a way that they simply roll out a pleasing dance number–pure and simple.

CD Shopping in Glasgow, Scotland, UK

I’m a few weeks late in putting this up, but the last stop on my recent UK vacation was Glasgow, Scotland, where I caught Spandau Ballet on their Reformation tour.

Glasgow was a nice city but actually the most boring one of the four that I visited. So how to pass the time? Shop for music!

Avalanche

Adam Ant, Strip. The second solo album by Adam Ant was produced by Phil Collins, which is why you hear that distinctive Collins drumbeat throughout the whole thing. Who knew Phil new from New Romanticism? Yet here the album is, replete with saucy Ant songs like “Strip” and “Puss N Boots,” each evoking Ant at his playful, dancing best. A double bonus? The title track features backup vocals by Frida of ABBA, whose album Collins also produced circa 1983. This disc and Adam’s other solo albums were remastered in 2005.

Associates, Double Hipness. The Associates were Scotland’s greatest contribution to New Romanticism and the world of music lost a giant in songwriting when vocalist Billy MacKenzie killed himself 12 years ago. Double Hipness, the last Associates album I was missing, is really a compilation of various leftover tracks and outtakes as well as stuff MacKenzie recorded under the Associates moniker at various points after the band were really done. Most interestingly, it contains the single “Steven You’re Still Really Something,” said to be a response to Morrissey in The Smith’s song “William, It Was Really Nothing.” (Morrisey’s first name is Steven, you see, and MacKenzie’s was William!) Moz denies a connection in the songs but it’s still a damn good glammed-up tune.

Human League, Secrets. The Human League have been touring quite a bit in recent years but haven’t put out any fresh material since Secrets in 2001. It’s a solid album that indicates that the Human League should record some more stuff. Supposedly, Phil Oakey has said, the band is considering a sort of duets album where they collaborate with other musicians in the near future? Meanwhile, Oakey has dueted with Little Boots on her debut album with the song “Symmetry.”

The Other Two, Selfish. Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert are awesome and deserve devastating amounts of musical respect as the drummer and keyboardist of New Order respectively. However, it’s hard to imagine that a lot of people were wondering what they were doing while Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook pursued other projects for much of the 1990s. Well, they called themselves “The Other Two” and recorded some tracks. Now that you know, you don’t really need to hear them. They are completely lovely but absolutely forgettable.

Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Scream (Deluxe Edition). One small advantage of not owning the first album by Siouxsie and the Banshees was that I could buy the deluxe edition eventually with no remorse of duplicating my purchase! The second advantage was that Avalanche had it at a fabulous price. As lovely as Siouxsie can be and as great a band as this was, the first album isn’t really their best work anyway. (Thankfully the extras here include such goodies as the 7″ version of “Hong Kong Garden.”)

Fopp

Bronksi Beat, Age of Consent. Surely, my admiration for New Romantic dance pop isn’t surprising to you at this point. So here we have vocalist Jimmy Somerville and bandmates Steve Bronski and Larry Steinbachek on keyboards and drums. Interestingly, Bronski Beat took their name as a riff on Roxy Music and partly inspired by Gunter Grass’ novel The Tim Drum, a big influence on many New Romantic musicians. Bronski Beat’s first album contains some extremely good dance tunes like the instantly recognizable “Smalltown Boy.”

Sonic Youth, Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star. The Sonic Youth rampage continued! This album, their ninth studio album from 1994, contains such exotic post-punk gems such as “Bull in the Heather,” which pretty much sums up the band’s entire musical attitude both musically and lyrically. A must-have for any new Sonic Youth fan, like me.

Sons and Daughters, Love the Cup. When in Scotland, buy Scottish bands! So here we have the first entry by Sons and Daughters, children of Glasgow, who I first heard at Liberation Dance Party when their latest album was released. It’s a fun jangle rock cacophony of Scottish wailing and ooh’s, which kind of serves as a hallmark for the band’s sounds. Not for everyone, but worth a try if you are looking for some new indie rock music to buy.

Talk Talk, The Party’s Over. I took the opportunity to round out my Talk Talk collection when I was in the United Kingdom and I could actually buy the physical albums in physical person (something that I can be a bit obsessive about at times). The Party’s Over, their first album, contains terrific tracks like “Talk Talk” and “It’s So Serious” and it would seriously rate on my list of best albums of all time (somewhere) due to its incredible synth arrangements and lush but dense production. Colin Thurston, who produced the first two Duran Duran albums, scored another New Romantic knockout with this album, in my opinion.

Talk Talk, The Spirit of Eden. By the time of their fourth album, Talk Talk had moved into experimenting with a lot of different instruments, which made record companies unhappy after their out-of-the-park hit “It’s My Life” on their second album. Still, while Mark Hollis was inventing a whole new genre with “post-rock,” he managed to create some beautiful, ethereal songs that will likely make you recognize what a tortured genius he is.

Television, Adventure. Punk band Television are among the slowest to ever produce an album, which might be unfair of me to say since I don’t know what obstacles they have really faced. Still, the three they have put out to date (with a fourth on the way perhaps??) contain excellent examples of punk guitar, yielding utterly respendent rock gems that make you want to listen to them again and again.

Pet Peeves with Classifying Music Genres

I’m inevitably annoyed when I load new music onto iTunes and the album appears with a classification of music genre that some ignorant dullard assigned to it.

Okay, so these days most everyone gets electronica right. Okay, we can basically count on dullards everywhere to classify Royksopp as electronica and Ladytron as electronica (although I could quibble there a bit).

But the most basic of basics almost never seems to be right when it comes to my music collection.

I have punk and post-punk music. I understand those genres are too complicated by themselves to serve as labels for the vast majority of people, but you could at least call them “rock.” That’s what they are; they are subgenres of rock music.

I also have New Wave, New Romantic, a bit of Disco, Hi-NRG, whatever. These are subgenres of pop.

I won’t argue the fine points of classification with The Powers that Genrify but at the very least get the rock and the pop straight.

And really, abandon the label “alternative” altogether. In the 1980s, “alternative” meant New Wave. In the 1990s, “alternative” meant grunge. New Wave, pop; grunge, rock; alternative as a label, useless.

CD Shopping in Edinburgh, Scotland

Edinburgh is a great, historic city full of castles, historic dwellings and pubs, winding paths, and a fair dose of urban grandeur. It also has CD shops. Among those CD shops it the small independent Avalanche, just a skip off the famed Royal Mile. Although much revered by the locals, it’s actually not a terrific shop at all. It has a bad selection of anything that I would have considered interesting. It does have a sister shop, however, in Glasgow under separate management. That shop is very impressive indeed. The city of Edinburgh has no less than three HMV stores. I hit the one closest to the center of town, on Princes Street in New Town.

Avalanche

Bad Lieutenant, Never Cry Another Tear. Bernard Sumner, bereft of New Order since Peter Hook broke it up, has joined a new band where a couple of guitarists and vocalists have thrown together to make some vaguely Britpop sounding music, with the occasional participation of drummer Stephen Morris of Joy Division and New Order. Altogether, it’s not a displeasing album as Sumner’s famously cool voice sounds quite a bit warmer than usual against the symphony of strings that make up the songs. Still, you would likely give it a pass if you weren’t as big a fan of these guys as I am.

Buggles, The Age of Plastic. The Buggles were the band led by Trevor Horn, who famously had the first music video on MTV with the lead single from this album, “Video Killed the Radio Star.” As mentioned here before, Horn went on to produce some extraordinary New Wave but he cut his teeth as a musician here, turning out some wonderfully weird but definitely danceable sci-fi tunes. You would likely be surprised at how much you like it.

Monaco, Monaco. When New Order went on hiatus through much of the 1990s, bassist Peter Hook teamed up with vocalist David Potts, who had performed with Hooky’s former band Revenge. Their first album Music for Pleasure produced the widely recognized “What Do You Want from Me?,” which is often mistaken for a New Order tune due to Hooky’s easily recognizable bass playing and Potts’ icy voice, which sounds similar to Sumner’s. The second album from the group, after which it broke up, is hard to find but well worth the trouble.

HMV

Adam and the Ants, Dirk Wears White Sox. The three albums that Adam Ant did with a band called the Ants were remastered and re-released in 2004. I’ve picked up the second and third, but here is the first, which proclaims the band’s artistic intentions by invoking the name of British actor Dirk Bogarde, who made powerful and artistic films throughout the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. The album is much darker than most of the familiar Adam Ant material and never produced a hit.

Blancmange, Mange Tout. The extraordinary New Romantic band Blancmange, mysteriously named after a gelatinous dessert, saw its three albums remastered and re-released in the United Kingdom in 2008. The band has reformed to record new material after releasing three albums in the ’80s–which is good because these are three terrific albums. This album, their second, bears some terrifically bright dance beats combined with the deep and distinctive vocals of Neil Arthur in numbers such as “Don’t Tell Me” and an ABBA cover “The Day Before You Came.”

Editors, In This Light and On This Evening (2CD). Editors vocalist Tom Smith is often accused of borrowing a lot from Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, but once you see the charismatic Editors frontman in concert, you’ll know two things: 1. His admiration for Curtis is honest and honorable, and 2. His band has risen far past being just a Joy Division knockoff. This album, their third, relies much more on synthesizers than their previous two, although keyboards have always been a big part of Smith’s performances.

Sonic Youth, Murray Street.
Sonic Youth, A Thousand Leaves.
Sonic Youth, Screaming Fields of Sonic Love.

Ugh, Michael Darpino, what have you gotten me into? Collecting Sonic Youth albums without a roadmap is sometimes bewildering. For example, I unintentionally purchased the compilation album Screaming Fields of Sonic Love because I didn’t recognize it for what it was–and being overseas I had no Internet connection for research on the fly. Still, with the purchases of Murray Street and A Thousand Leaves, I not only have two very strong entries in the Sonic Youth catalogue, I’m a mere five albums from owning every studio album, should that be my goal. These two albums seem to have a much more contemplative tone than some of their others and as such represent some of their more downtempo yet radiant material–almost as if they had punkified the Alan Parsons Project or something. They totally love Sonic Youth over in the United Kingdom and I was pleased as to the number of their albums you could find much more easily than in the United States.

Spandau Ballet, Gold. While I was in Scotland, I saw the reunion tour of Spandau Ballet. It was a terrific show! And in anticipation of it, I picked up this greatest hits disc that came out while I was there. Did I really need it? No, but it has 17 of the band’s videos at a pretty good price. Being a class MTV-era music fiend, I love owning videos. Spandau’s videos also represent the height of New Romantic fashion, even the costume changes from the more avante garde to the well-tailored suits.

Ultravox, U-Vox. The classic line-up of Ultravox featuring incomparable vocalist Midge Ure reformed in 2009 for some reunion touring, which will extend into 2010. At the same time, Ure’s Ultravox output of five studio albums and one live disc were remastered and re-released as well. Imagine my surprise to realize then that I had missed picking up this album, the fifth and final studio album that Ure made with the band! It contains a number of hidden gems of the Ure/Ultravox catalog–including the soaring and melodic “Same Old Story” and the somber and dramatic “All Fall Down”–making it a worthy purchase indeed.