36. OMD: Bauhaus Staircase

Chosen By: Stu

Released: 27 October 2023 

Comments - 

Dean - Meretricious flim flam. That's it! I realize that OMD have been highly influential but this album undermines a potentially positive legacy.

Paul - I'm not going in two-footed like Dean but then I didn't listen to this with any real expectations. It's been about 40 years since OMD were on my radar (the odd single aside) and I would have been more than surprised if they were back to their early-eighties heyday. What I mostly find is some fairly ordinary, forgettable synth-pop.

The title track might have made a better instrumental, I'm no great lover of vocoder and a couple of tracks annoy me - 'Kleptocracy' and 'Anthropocene'. If they were young and just starting out I could excuse the fifth-form poetry level of discourse. At least they're not as pedestrian as some of the tracks on here. 

On the other hand, 'Evolution of Species' is a lively update on 'Genetic Engineering', 'Don't Go' is worthy of being included in any OMD 'Best Of' and 'Healing' is a decent closer. If it is to be their last album it's an ok way to go out. No more, no less. One thing I will say, having seen them live recently, is that these songs sounded much better at gig volume. 

Ben -  I just dont like it. I find their use of synths limiting - to me they seem to try too hard to put bells and whistles on tracks to make them different from the others. I don't like his voice or his plaintive singing style. It all seems a bit juvenile and soulless. I don't mind the more upbeat tracks with a flavour of pet shop boys and new order but I’m reaching for something positive. Right, I’ve listened to it now, I won’t be doing that again.

Stu - There’s at lot to pack in here so be patient. As I recall way back in my early teens, I was a lover of 7” singles!! At 13 I retrieved mum and dad’s records from the loft and spent a year with them and the Dansette in my bedroom. 237 of them, cataloguing, fixing sleeves, reviewing, the full works! Favourites were LET’S DANCE, by CHRIS MONTEZ, RUBBER BALL by BOBBY VEE, SUMMERTIME BLUES by EDDIE COCHRAN, but top billing went to TELSTAR by THE TORNADOES ❤️❤️ an instrumental firecracker! These records set the pattern for my musical journey which still burns brightly today!!! Switching from listening to these records, I started to listen to the wireless!! Bizarrely I didn’t take much notice of the 70’s music! The very first records that did resonate were as follows; HEROES, REBEL REBEL, QUEEN BITCH, SUFFRAGETTE CITY, SORROW and lots more by BOWIE, DREAMING, SUNDAY GIRL, DENIS, ATOMIC, UNION CITY BLUE by BLONDIE, I WILL FOLLOW by U2 and ELECTRICITY by OMD!

Before too long it was all ELECTRICITY and MESSAGES! The debut LP, BUNKER SOLDIERS, RED FRAME WHITE LIGHT and plenty of crazy stuff. Then ORGANISATION dropped and I was hooked up for the long haul! Carpo and I spent hours and hours with there records!! Then ARCHITECTURE & MORALITY dropped and incredibly they were still getting better! SOUVENIR, JOAN OF ARC, MAID OF ORLEANS and the mighty SEALAND! They shared some DNA with NUMAN and KRAFTWERK and these were my favourite bands of the time! I liked the SYNTH music well before I got in to GUITAR music.

And then they dropped DAZZLE SHIPS which on reflection was GEDGE dropping SEAMONSTERS! It was the perfect misstep to what the record label and lots of fans expected! To me it was GENIUS  and BRAVE and cemented my love for the band!! After this record things changed shape dramatically, splits, line up changes, side projects etc; BUT they stuck to it and continued to release LPS. There’s been a few nuggets since BUT nothing that touches those first 4 records!! Unlike some folk, I’m sometimes happy to see a band I love continue to release records knowing that they are unlikely to be trying to reinvent the wheel or have that teenage optimism and swagger! I LOVE OMD! I met the guys at RESIDENT last year in Brighton, left a copy of NUTS with Paul Humphrey’s to read to his youngster!

BAUHAUS STAIRCASE, I can hear some classic OMD, a sprinkle of KRAFTWERK. 45 years on from ELECTRICITY I’m not expecting anything to better that but I’m hoping to hear OMD. Last month Carpo and I caught them in Wolverhampton and with a huge visual display and the volume cranked up it really did hit the spot! The new songs sounded great as did TESLA GIRLS and all the other hits!!

I STILL LOVE OMD ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️